Chapter 15
Frederica had not gone home directly.
She had not been able to face her own house — its silence, its locked doors, the particular dread that had taken up residence in its rooms — and had asked the coachman to set her down at the back garden gate, wanting only a few minutes alone in the cool evening air before stepping back behind those walls.
It was a foolish thing. She knew it was foolish even as she did it, but the relief of having spoken aloud at last — of having been heard, and believed, and not turned away — had given her a courage she had not felt in weeks.
She walked the gravel path slowly, her hand brushing the leaves of the box hedge, breathing as if breathing itself were a thing newly permitted.
He came from behind the wall.
A hand closed over her mouth before she could draw breath.
An arm went round her waist and lifted her clean off her feet — not roughly, but with a calm, practised efficiency that was somehow worse than violence — and the smell of him reached her, pipe smoke and stale wool, before her mind caught up to what was happening.
“Quietly now, Miss Longleat.” Rathbone’s voice, close to her ear. “We have a long way to go.”
She tried to struggle. She kicked once, weakly; her fist found the rough wool of his coat and accomplished nothing.
His grip was that of a man who had calculated her exact strength and accounted for it, and the alley behind her own garden gate was empty, and the closed carriage waiting there had its lamps unlit.
He bundled her inside and pulled the door shut behind them. The wheels began to move.
Through the small window, she watched the lit windows of her own house dwindle behind her.
No one had seen her go.
“Nora?”
David’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline as Nora pushed open the door to his study and walked in directly, without even an introduction.
Her maid hovered in the corridor behind her, wide-eyed, and David caught the butler’s disapproving glance before the door swung to — not quite closed, for propriety’s sake, but near enough.
Her face was drawn, her eyes fixing his as she hurried towards him, reaching out to grasp his hands.
“It is Frederica,” she said, urgently. “Hampshire, she came to me yesterday afternoon — and she told me everything.”
David’s heart ricocheted around his chest as fear began to climb up his spine, digging its claws into his flesh. “Everything?”
“Rathbone has been threatening her for weeks.” Nora’s fingers tightened on his.
“He came to her at the park — that was when I first saw him grasp her arm. He has called at her townhouse. He has spoken to her in private and he has frightened her badly enough that she has been unable to sleep. She would not tell me what hold he claims to have, only that she believed she had no choice but to do as he wished. She was the colour of paper when she came to me, Hampshire. I have never seen her so afraid.”
David drew a slow breath, the words landing one after another like stones into still water.
He had suspected — they had both suspected — but to hear it confirmed, to hear that for weeks Frederica had been carrying this alone while he had stood by uncomprehending, struck him with a guilt so sharp it stole the breath from him.
“There is more.” Nora’s voice dropped. “I sent word to you last night about Rathbone in the carriage — but there is something I did not write. After Frederica left me, I could not settle. I went to my mother and told her I was unwell, and I have been turning it over ever since. Hampshire, when Frederica spoke of him, she said something that has not left me. She said — he knew my father. Not as a clerk knows a master. She said it with such weight that I am certain there is more to it than service. I think Rathbone knew something about your uncle that your uncle could not afford to have known. I think that is what he is using against her now — whatever he held over your uncle, he is holding over her.”
“Then he is the key to all of this,” David muttered, shaking his head as Nora gazed up at him with frightened eyes. “I have known it. Frederica would not tell me the truth because she is afraid of him. Whatever it is that he holds over her, if she is free of it then we will all be free.”
Nora regarded him for a moment, her head tilted. “So our plan is to confront a dangerous man whose whereabouts we do not know, whose motives we do not fully understand, and whose leverage over your cousin we cannot yet identify.”
David winced. “When you put it like that—”
“I am merely ensuring we understand the full extent of what lies before us.” The corner of her mouth twitched — and then, despite everything, despite the fear and the terrible weight of the afternoon, she laughed.
It was a short, startled sound, as if it had escaped against her will, and it broke something open in the room — some knot of dread that had been tightening since she had walked through his door.
David stared at her. And then, helplessly, he laughed too.
It was not a long laugh, nor a loud one. It was the laugh of two people standing at the edge of something frightening who had discovered, to their mutual astonishment, that they were still capable of finding each other funny.
“Well,” he said, when the laughter had subsided into something quieter and warmer, “at least we are clear.”
“Perfectly clear,” she agreed, and the smile she gave him was the bravest thing he had seen all day.
“How are we to stop him if we do not know what he is doing, nor where he has gone?”
Before David could answer, a knock came at the door. Drawing a steadying breath, his mind still swirling with all that Nora had told him, he called for the servant to enter.
“My lord. This letter has only just arrived for you.” The footman held out the silver tray towards David, a letter upon it. “It was urgent, I believe.”
“Who brought it?” Nora asked, before the footman could step back. “Is the person still present, waiting for a reply?”
The footman glanced at David, who nodded slowly to confirm that he was content with both the questions and the answer the footman would give. “No, my lady,” the footman replied, bowing his head. “A street child brought it but stated it was to be delivered at once.”
“Thank you. You are excused.” David turned the letter over, seeing the wax there but no seal pressed into it. He held it out for Nora to see. “Look. I fear that this may be – ”
“Open it,” she whispered at once, her eyes rounding, face pale. “Oh, if Frederica is injured, I shall not forgive myself for my lack of action on her behalf.”
David broke the seal. “I am sure there was nothing you could do, Nora,” he said, unfolding the letter, the air thickening around him.
His eyes skimmed the few lines, dread pooling in his stomach.
The words blurred slightly as his heart began to pound, the heavy weight of the message sinking down into him.
“Hampshire?”
The worry in Nora’s expression matched his own fear.
“He has taken her.” David’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“He says she is somewhere safe — those are his words, his idea of safety — and that she will remain in his keeping until I deliver to him a sum of money and the deed to a parcel of land from the Cheltenham estate. The exchange is to take place this afternoon. At three o’clock, his man will come to my door.
If I do not have what he demands, or if I bring any other person with me, or if I attempt to involve the magistrates — ” He drew a hard breath.
“Then he writes that he cannot answer for what becomes of her. See how he signs it, ‘R’? He makes no pretence now.”
Nora pressed her hand to her mouth, tears on her cheek. “If only I had rushed towards the carriage when it pulled away. If only I had not cared what would have been thought of me. I might now know where Frederica is gone.”
He stepped toward her and she did not step back.
The space between them closed and David, knowing the impropriety and no longer caring about it, opened his arms. She came into them with a shudder that ran through her entire frame, her forehead pressing against his chest, her hands finding the lapels of his coat and gripping them as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water.
He felt the buttons of his coat press against her collarbone through the thin muslin of her dress.
He felt the rapid, unsteady rise and fall of her breathing against his ribs.
Her hair smelled of lavender — the same lavender, exactly the same — and a strand of auburn had come loose against his cheek, and the recognition of it went through him like a blade, sharp and sweet and entirely ruinous.
He wrapped his arms around her and held, not tightly, not with the crushing desperation he felt, but with a steadiness he willed into his muscles, making himself an anchor for her when everything else was adrift.
His hand settled between her shoulder blades, and he could feel the fine tremor beneath his palm, the effort it took her to keep from breaking apart.
“It is not your fault,” he said, and his lips were against her temple, close enough that the words vibrated against her skin. “It is Rathbone’s doing. All of it.”
She nodded against his chest. Her fingers tightened on his lapels, and he felt the pull of the fabric against his shoulders, the small violence of her grip.
She was holding on. She was letting him hold her.
After a year of separation, a year of absence and silence, and the careful, agonizing distance they had maintained since finding each other again — she was in his arms.
The fury came, then — not hot but cold, a winter fury, hard-edged and precise. It settled into his bones alongside the warmth of her body, and he made a vow to himself that he did not speak aloud, because speaking it would have required releasing her, and he was not yet ready for that.