Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
WHERE’S GENEVIEVE?” DEMANDED JACK, HIS LUNGS heaving for air as he burst through the door.
“Sweet Saint Columba, just look at the snow ye’re troddin’ all over my clean floor!” scolded Doreen, who was on her knees scouring the floorboards at the end of the hall. “Do ye not know to take off yer boots when ye come inside?”
“Genevieve!” shouted Jack, ignoring Doreen as he threw open the doors to the drawing room. He spun around in frustration on finding it empty and ran to the stairs. “Genevieve!”
“What’s all this commotion?” demanded Oliver, appearing from the door to the kitchen with a boot in one hand and a greasy brown rag in the other. His gaze fell upon Jack’s panicked face. “What’s happened, lad?”
“Here now, all of ye, stop and take yer boots off!” commanded Doreen, tossing her brush in her bucket in frustration as Annabelle, Simon, Grace, and Jamie stampeded into the house, depositing muddy snow everywhere. “Have ye all taken leave of yer senses?”
“Oliver, where is Genevieve?” Jack’s pale face was glistening with sweat and his eyes were wild and frantic.
“Why, she’s in the cellar, lad,” said Oliver, realizing that something was terribly wrong. He glanced at the children to be sure no one was hurt, then frowned. “Where’s Charlotte?”
Jack tore through the kitchen and sprinted down the cellar stairs.
There he found Genevieve sitting on a crate, wearily rifling through the contents of a trunk that lay open before her.
She appeared to have been analyzing the contents of the cellar for a considerable length of time, and was surrounded by a veritable mountain of musty-smelling boxes, paintings, chests, and discarded furniture.
“You’ve got to get her back.” Jack’s voice was curt and desperate.
“She didn’t do anythin’—she just went along because she wanted to help.
I was the one who stole the jewels.” He wrenched the stolen jewelry from his pockets and shoved it carelessly into Genevieve’s hands.
“That’s all of it—I swear I didn’t take anything else.
Just take that to Mr. Ingram and make him let her go. ”
Genevieve looked in horror at the beautiful pieces glittering in her hands. “My God, Jack,” she whispered, suddenly feeling as if she couldn’t breathe, “what have you done?”
He blinked hard, fighting the tears threatening to spill from his eyes.
“I stole this jewelry from Mr. Ingram’s shop,” he confessed miserably.
“I was goin’ to sell it and give you the money, so you could pay the bloody bank and keep your house and no one would be put on the street.
But Mr. Ingram spotted me before I had left the shop and everyone started to run and then Charlotte tripped and fell and he wouldn’t let her go. ”
The other children came racing down the cellar steps, followed by Oliver, Doreen, Eunice, and Haydon.
“I don’t understand.” Genevieve fought to remain calm as she tried to make sense of what Jack was telling her. “Why would Mr. Ingram detain Charlotte?”
“Because she was the only one of us that he could catch.” Grace’s face was drawn and pale against the dim light.
“I know I should have made her go before me because of her leg, but I was closer to the door and I thought she was following right behind—and she was—but then she tripped and—I’m sorry, Genevieve.
” She brushed angrily at the tears pouring down her cheeks.
Suddenly all the children began to speak at once, the voices shrill with fear and agitation.
“We thought we would go in and out without any trouble—”
“But when Mr. Ingram saw Jack by the jewelry case, I knocked the knight’s armor over—”
“—And then that fat old man tripped Jamie with his walking stick and his wife went down like a top—”
“—And I told him to let Jamie go, but he wouldn’t, so I hit him in the legs with his stick—”
“—And I broke a painting over Mr. Ingram’s head and he started to chase me—”
“—So we threw a tablecloth over him, which made him sorely mad—”
“—And then we all ran out—”
“—Except for Charlotte.”
Genevieve stared at her brood in shock. “You attacked Mr. Ingram?”
“It was my idea,” said Jack adamantly. He wanted to spare the children from Genevieve’s anger and disappointment. “I made them come with me.”
“That’s not true!” protested Grace.
“We all wanted to go,” Simon assured Genevieve.
“And we had to make Jack see that it would be better if he didn’t do it alone,” Annabelle elaborated.
“They were going to leave me behind, but I wouldn’t let them,” finished Jamie.
“I see.” Genevieve knew she should be angry with them, but there was no time for that now.
Later, when Charlotte was safely back home, she would find the strength to be utterly furious with all of them.
All that mattered in that moment was that she return the stolen jewelry and bring Charlotte home.
“Come, Genevieve.” Haydon’s voice was reassuringly calm and steady. “We shall return the jewels to Mr. Ingram, apologize profusely for the trouble the children have caused him, agree to pay for anything that was damaged, and bring Charlotte home.”
Genevieve shook her head. “She won’t be at Mr. Ingram’s anymore,” she said with dull certainty. “The police will have come and taken her away. She is at the prison.”
“Then we shall go and retrieve her from there. Come.” He extended his hand to her.
“You cannot accompany me.” She slowly rose to her feet, unable to accept his help because her hands were still clutching the stolen jewels.
“Of course I can,” Haydon argued flatly. “As your husband I’m sure they will expect me to be at your side.”
She shook her head, overwhelmed by her fear for Charlotte.
“We have already courted disaster by letting you be seen by Governor Thomson and Police Constable Drummond. We deceived them once, but that doesn’t mean they will be misled a second time.
There is also the risk of having that awful warder recognize you—or an officer of the court, or even another prisoner in the jail. We cannot take that chance.”
“I’m afraid the lass is right, lad,” said Oliver soberly. “’Tis a strange fact that those of us who have spent time in prison have a far keener sense of things than bumbling lackwits like Governor Thomson, or even that suet-headed Constable Drummond.”
“’Tis a skill that comes from sitting all day and night in a dirty, cramped cell with naught but yerself for company,” explained Doreen. “It makes ye more aware of yer surroundings, and of people as well.”
“I hardly think one of the other prisoners is going to recognize me,” objected Haydon. “I look entirely different than I did when I was there.”
“They won’t have to look at you,” Eunice assured him.
“They’ll be able to tell who ye are just by listenin’ to your voice, or the sound of yer steps as ye walk down the hallway.
That’s something even I learned to do during my time there.
Ye start to pay attention to all the little things, like who scrapes the edge of their heels as they pass, or how heavy a person’s step is, or what a voice sounds like as it bounces off the cold stone walls. It helps to pass the time.”
“Then I shall disguise my voice and alter my stride,” said Haydon stubbornly.
“No.” Genevieve’s tone was resolute. In truth, she would have taken comfort in Haydon’s strong presence at the jail, but the possibility that he might be discovered as Lord Redmond and hauled back into his cell was too great.
“I already have one member of my family in jail, Haydon—I won’t risk having you arrested as well. ”
“Then I’ll go with you,” said Jack. “I’ll tell them Charlotte had nothing to do with the robbery.
They can arrest me instead. Old Thomson is just dyin’ to have me lashed and sent away, and so is that bastard Constable Drummond.
Whatever they do to me, I can take care of myself far better than Charlotte can. ”
Genevieve looked at Jack in surprise. His gray eyes were glittering with determination and his hands were clenched at his sides.
She had always known he was capable of empathy for others.
The fact that he had risked his own freedom to help Haydon escape had been ample testament to that.
Even so, his willingness to sacrifice himself for Charlotte moved her deeply.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Jack.
I know you want to help Charlotte, but I don’t believe the Governor will let you trade yourself for one of his prisoners.
If anything, you’ll be arrested along with Charlotte, and then there will be two of you to worry about.
I will go on my own, I will return these jewels and I will make Governor Thomson and Constable Drummond see that they have no reason to detain Charlotte further.
And after Charlotte is safely at home once again,” she finished, raking her gaze over her dejected-looking children, “we shall further discuss the matter of your trying to rob Mr. Ingram.”
CONSTABLE DRUMMOND REGARDED GENEVIEVE WITH spurious sympathy over the skeletal steeple of his fingers.
His hands were unusually large with a taut sheet of pale skin stretched over them, and his fingernails were long and not quite clean.
Given his hands and the greasy length of his hair, it was clear he was a man who did not concern himself overmuch with his personal ablutions.
Of course, there was the black swath of hair that he curried and combed alongside each cheek, but even that was in need of a good trimming.
Genevieve had long assumed that he had neither wife nor mistress, but until she sat across from him in Governor Thomson’s office, uncomfortably aware of his musky, unwashed odor, she had not realized that he had no interest in attracting a member of the opposite sex into the narrow, cheerless parameters of his life.