Chapter 36
Thirty-six
Kate
Leaving her children in capable hands, Kate evaded Damien and Rafe. Verifying with Hunt’s guards that Lavender hadn’t been found at the manor, Kate had stormed almost half a mile down the lane before Fletch caught up in the carriage.
He halted beside her to shout, “You didn’t wait for me to hitch the team!”
Those weren’t Damien’s placid nags but a young, fresh team straining at the bit. In her fury, she climbed up without waiting for assistance. “You didn’t tell me you were hitching a team!”
Why had he gone for a carriage and not his horse? It certainly hadn’t been because he was expecting to pick her up, was it? The fool soldier was much more likely to believe he was rescuing Lavender single-handed.
“You were supposed to stay with the children, where you were safe.” Grumpily, he urged the horses into a trot.
That didn’t answer her question. “I am not safe while Hugh is promising the Jamesons they may have my farm!”
“He wrecked a window frame! Just exactly what do you think you can do against a lunatic carrying an ax if Jasper couldn’t stop him?” He urged the team back to a gallop.
“Where did you steal the horses?” she countered, since the only weapons she possessed were shears and a pistol with one shot.
“Jack’s. That’s where I’ve been. His stable is over by the Jameson’s cottage. The women aren’t there. They may be half way to Birmingham for all we know, but I don’t think they’d leave their children. Jack has taken the highway, just in case.” He looked grim.
That meant Fletch had probably sent the recently-married Honorable Jack on a goose chase, while he deliberately stormed into a dangerous situation on his own. Mad.
Not entirely mad.
They had good reason to believe Hugh was a killer and possibly a lunatic.
“You are thinking Hugh broke into the inn to possibly harm me?” She tried to curb her fury and think rationally, but who knew what went on in a madman’s thoughts?
The only conclusion she reached from a broken window, a stolen cart, and missing women was that someone was in danger. Imagining their terror, she shivered.
“That is one of many possibilities and not even the worst of them,” he answered grimly, not elaborating. He was back to surliness.
She was a mother, not a warrior. But if harm had come to anyone because of her late husband’s demented relation. . . She could not sit and do nothing. “My house is as sound as a fortress,” she warned.
“Which is why you shouldn’t be involved!” he shouted again. “I have armed soldiers surrounding it. What the devil do you think you can do?”
She didn’t know. “If he sees the soldiers, what will he do?” And the answer formed without thought—use Lavender as hostage to get what he wants.
Did that mean the others were safe—or had assisted Hugh?
Fletch gritted his teeth and drove faster. His clenched square jaw bristled with late afternoon beard, and any resemblance to a gentleman had fled. But she understood. He preferred action to struggling with words.
Kate thought aloud for him. “Jasper was unconscious. He may have been poisoned or hit over the head. Lavender and Maryann were likely with Jasper when whoever it was broke in. For all we know, Hugh could be threatening the Jamesons as well. If he’s the culprit—and I cannot imagine who else would be so mad—I have to be the one to deal with him. ”
No, she didn’t, her craven side argued with her conclusion.
But she’d spent her life cowering behind the walls of her father’s home.
Confident, creative Lavender had offered hope instead of fear, and Kate had gradually emerged from her shell.
She liked Kate, The Squire’s Daughter, she was growing into—the person she should have been, had she not wasted her life hiding.
That person would not let down her friends.
Fletch didn’t reply. He wouldn’t. Unlike her sister’s legal-minded spouse, Fletch didn’t waste time arguing.
Reaching the farm, he stopped the carriage in the lane between the hedgerows, and waited for his sentry to ride out of the field.
At least the soldier appeared unharmed. Maybe they were panicking over nothing.
“No visitors?” Fletch asked the soldier.
“Only people been by was in that cart the actors across the way use,” the man replied. “They drove up to the Hall a bit ago.”
The Hall, not her home? The actors, not Hugh? No, that couldn’t be right.
Kate had seen Damien questioning the troupe before she left. They couldn’t possibly have arrived without passing her. The cart had to have left before the actors on the stage left the inn—unless there were more than the ones on stage.
Did that mean the actors were behind the disappearances? That made no sense.
But if the lunatic had seen the soldiers at her house.
. . In horror, she turned to stare at the foreboding, sprawling, two-story Sutter Hall across the lane.
Untrimmed trees loomed over the stone structure, casting it in heavier shadow than the cloudy day.
Black shutters cast gray walls into deeper gloom. The place practically shrieked haunted.
“Slip behind the Hall’s shrubbery,” Fletch ordered the sentry, apparently reaching the same appalling conclusion. “Stay out of sight and work your way around to the barn. I’ll cover the front. You watch to see if they leave out the back.”
Then Fletch boldly turned the carriage into the Hall’s drive as if they belonged there. She wanted to leap out and run far, far away.
Kate hadn’t been near the Hall since her innocence had been destroyed and childhood ended. She froze in indecision, clinging to disbelief. “Why would kidnappers come here?”
“One, no one is watching it, so anyone can come and go. Two, hiding places. The Hall is huge with multiple exits and empty rooms.” He nodded at the cart in front of the house with the team still attached.
“Three, that covered cart is the best way anyone could have removed the women without being seen.”
Aghast, she stared from the cart to the dark, looming fortress of her nightmares. “Does that mean the troupe is helping Hugh?”
“Or Hugh simply stole the cart. Lunatic, remember?” He halted the carriage by the overgrown hedge.
“And we’re to simply walk up and knock on the door?” Was this how men survived, bullying their way through life? Kate shivered in terror. It was all very well to renounce fear, but when faced with Armageddon. . .
“With you here, I’m reconsidering my approach,” he said, as if thinking aloud. “But no, it does not necessarily mean the actors are helping. Hugh may be implicating them, which is not as insane as it seems. Or he could just be reacting in panic.”
Fletch was plotting, not rushing in with weapons drawn? Kate had to quell her own violent desire to throttle Hugh, or run away, screaming, and start listening.
“The carriage’s hood blocks sight of you from this angle.
If you’ll slip out on your side, you can follow my sentry and work your way to the rear by hiding behind the hedge.
Once I drive up to the front, any scoundrels inside are likely to flee out the rear.
If they do so with hostages, the ladies won’t recognize my soldier.
We can hope, if you show yourself, they will realize help has arrived. ”
She’d almost forgotten that the surly clockmaker had been an officer once. She heard the soldier he had once been in his clipped, curt orders. She almost replied “Aye, aye, sir.” She appreciated that he hadn’t said, “If the ladies are still alive or conscious. . .”
But with that fear fully embedded, she had to face this dreaded tomb without Fletch’s stalwart accompaniment. She had to face the Hall alone, not knowing who was friend or foe. Her pistol was useless.
She could have stormed her own home without flinching, but the wretched Hall. . . That had not been in her plan, if she’d had a plan. Which she hadn’t.
If all she had to do was hide in the bushes and show her face. . .
Swallowing hard, she climbed from the carriage while Fletch distracted any occupants by driving up to the front, bristling with weapons. Hugh had no rifle, right?
She had to do this. Ghosts weren’t real. Lavender was. Think about the laughing, carefree lady who had single-handedly employed a village of impoverished women. For Lavender, Kate had to be brave.
But what about the man with an injured arm stalking toward what could be a household of lunatics and killers?
He was risking his life for no reason of his own.
Fletch was a clockmaker, she was finally starting to understand.
He had never wanted to kill people. But for the sake of a nation, he had, and war had nearly destroyed him.
The real world outside her home was as terrifying as she’d feared—but there were still honorable people in it. She wanted to keep it that way.
Reassuring herself by gripping the butt of the pistol she hid in her skirt—she should have reinforced that pocket seam if she meant to carry weapons—Kate worked her way behind the house.
How could a man as feeble in the head as Hugh have overtaken a woman as bright as Lavender?
Especially if Maryann had been with her.
Could Vivien be working with Hugh? That might explain why the Jamesons were missing.
Kate simply had a hard time playing that through her mind.
She’d heard the story the Jameson children had told, but their report was as incomplete as the actors’.
Kate caught her foot on a tree root and winced as she grabbed a prickly branch. Good thing for gloves. Her light spencer and bonnet weren’t much protection against the no-doubt spider-infested shrubbery, but the bushes blocked sight of the formidable Hall. She took a breath and eased on.
To prevent panic from shutting down thought, as it had in the past, she concentrated on the little bit she knew. There might be a perfectly rational reason for a broken window and missing women and an unconscious guard.
No, there wasn’t.