Chapter 21 #2
The nanny breathed deeply, blinked, and coughed. Anthony placed his arms behind her shoulders, and Sophia pulled gently on her wrists to seat her upright.
“Amala.” Sophia looked into the woman’s wide and unfocused eyes. She waved a hand in front of her face and repeated her name. “What has happened?”
Amala blinked again. Then she clutched Sophia’s hand and looked up at the small crowd.
Her face crumpled, and tears gathered in her eyes when her gaze landed on her employer.
“My lord, Master Charles is not in his bedchamber. We have looked everywhere he might have gone but cannot find him.” Amala sobbed a gasp and put her hand over her mouth.
Her other hand clutched Sophia’s so tightly her knuckles were white. “Please help me find him!”
Sophia nodded. “Of course.” She looked up at Lord Pilkington, deferring to his position and expecting him to begin giving orders. He simply stared down at Amala, his face blank.
“Pilkington,” Anthony said firmly, standing. “Where shall we begin?”
Pilkington seemed to search for words he couldn’t find.
Dylan cleared his throat and Anthony stepped around Sophia to address Pilkington directly. “Major Stuart can dispatch runners to the post and bring reinforcements. We’ll begin an immediate search.”
“Probably just hiding . . .” Pilkington managed to say, and cleared his throat. “Charles likes to play hide-and-seek. He must be hiding. Amala Ayah, you must look in all of those places! I cannot fathom that you would cause this sort of worry without looking there first!”
Amala’s eyes widened, and Sophia felt her tremble.
From the set of her mouth, she knew the nanny’s reaction had nothing to do with fear of her employer and everything to do with outrage.
“I did look,” she bit out, and Pilkington blinked at her firm tone.
“He is not here.” She fumbled awkwardly and tried to stand.
Rachael and Sophia aided her, and Amala smoothed her hands over her sari and took a deep breath.
“My lord, I have searched every single hiding place where Charlie used to play, but hasn’t for the past week.
I have even searched places he likely would never have thought to hide.
He is not in the house. We must have additional help searching for your son.
” Amala’s face was still deathly pale, but she stood straight and did not blink away from Pilkington’s shocked attention.
Sophia noted the slight tremble that still vibrated through the woman’s frame, but realized that she and Rachael alone were likely the only two to see it. The nanny was fierce, and, in spite of Sophia’s thick, suffocating fear for Charlie, she internally cheered Amala Ayah.
Pilkington seemed at a loss—undoubtedly a servant had never spoken so firmly to him before, and Sophia hoped Amala would still have a position come morning. Of course, if they couldn’t find Charlie, the point was moot.
Sophia drove the thought away and put a trembling hand to her forehead. She looked at Anthony. “The first step. What shall be our first step?”
Anthony addressed Pilkington again, as the man was still as befuddled as a fish out of water. “With your permission, my lord, I’ll set the plan in motion. Suppose you go to your study and pour a glass of whiskey. I’ll join you straightaway once I’ve conferred with Stuart, here.”
Clergyman Denney addressed Anthony. “We would be better served to remain here in the library where there is more room to gather people.”
Lord Pilkington frowned. “But my best whiskey is in the study.” It was as though the man could focus on only one small, inconsequential detail at a time.
Denney glowered at Pilkington. He opened his mouth, likely to blast a rebuke, when Anthony held up a hand.
“Take him to his study,” Anthony told the clergyman in an undertone. “I shall meet you there presently.” Then he and Dylan stepped aside, their heads together in low conversation.
“Come along, my lord. I shall accompany you.” Denney took Pilkington’s arm and led him away. The remainder of the guests milled about and whispered.
Sophia turned to Amala, struck by a sudden thought. “The study!”
Amala shook her head. “I searched already. I couldn’t imagine him going there but I looked anyway.”
Rachael turned to Amala, patting her on the arm. “Can I get you anything?” she asked quietly.
Amala shook her head, and enormous tears pooled in her eyes. Sophia handed her a handkerchief while Rachael helped smoothed the woman’s dress.
Sophia glanced down the hallway, which was slowly filling with more and more people, questions bouncing around in the air. She felt the moment word began to spread. It was a wave, crashing through the entire house and filling each corner with worry and tension.
Think. Think.
“We will need a command post, of sorts,” she said, thinking of the clergyman’s suggestion. “Lord Pilkington’s study is not as big as the library.”
Amala agreed. “Perhaps half that size.”
“Suppose we gather people—” Sophia paused as Lady Seadon, the matron, let out a small shriek from her position at the drawing room door.
The news was traveling fast. “Suppose we gather useful people here in the library,” Sophia said to Rachael.
They maneuvered Amala into the library and sat her in a chair by the hearth.
Amala rubbed her hand along her forehead.
“I put him to bed. Lady Pilkington hasn’t done it for some time, and I’ve worried Charlie will feel as though he isn’t important.
I tuck him in and sing a song my mother taught me as a child.
” Her voice broke. “Tonight I retired to the servant’s sitting room.
An hour later, I checked on him, and he was gone.
I don’t know how long he has been missing. ”
Sophia nodded. “I shall find Antho—Lord Wilshire—in Lord Pilkington’s study. He may have more news for us by now.”
“I will stay here with Amala.” Rachael brushed Amala’s hair away from her face. “We will find him, dear lady. He is little—he cannot have gone far.”
“Unless someone has abducted him and taken him in a carriage,” Amala whispered.
Sophia fought back a new wave of panic that image produced.
She left the library on shaking legs and spotted Abdullah, who stood in the main hall with Himmat, his face creased in worry.
She gave the butler instructions to provide tea to Amala Ayah in the library and asked Abdullah to gather as many servants as were available. She then wound her way to the study.
She approached the study just as Major Stuart exited the room. He gave a grim head-nod in her direction and walked quickly down the hall.
Anthony was in the study with Lord and Lady Pilkington. She was as baffled as her husband, and Sophia suspected that once the shock of the pronouncement was no longer fresh, emotion would flood. Beneath her exterior, and sometimes notably closer to the surface, Lady Pilkington was a nervous woman.
Sophia knew she loved her son and had high hopes for his future.
She suspected that was partly the reason she had stayed away from Charlie of late; he was in pain, bothered so profoundly by something she was at a loss to explain that she left his care entirely to others and instead immersed herself deeply in things she did understand, could control.
Sophia stepped just inside the study door and stayed against the wall where she could unobtrusively observe.
He cannot have gone far. He cannot have gone far.
She hoped if she repeated the sentiment enough times in her mind, it would be true.
She couldn’t think in terms of an abduction, or worse. Not yet.
“Once Major Stuart returns with reinforcements, we shall divide into teams and begin searching the rooms and the grounds.” Anthony addressed the Pilkingtons, but also Clergyman Denney and Professor Gerald, who had followed closely on Sophia’s heels.
“You are certain the child is not in the mansion?” Gerald asked.
Anthony looked at Sophia, a brow raised.
She shook her head. “We cannot be certain as the mansion is extensive, but the child’s ayah has searched every place she thought he might be.
I have asked Abdullah to begin gathering servants in the library in order to give instructions to everyone at once and also have a designated gathering place to report when finished searching. ”
Anthony nodded. He spoke again with Lord Pilkington, and Sophia slowly approached the large desk where Amala had found Charlie hiding the night of the costume ball.
She hoped to see his little body crouched there again, but as she leaned to peer underneath, the space was as empty as she had known it would be.
Anthony finished his conversation with Pilkington and made a slow perusal of the room, stopping to examine the statues of two Hindu gods on the mantel: Vishnu, the preserver, blue with multiple arms, and Kali, the goddess of death, her tongue dripping blood and adorned in a necklace of human skulls.
Sophia frowned. Lady Pilkington had mentioned once on a tour of the mansion that her husband favored his décor in groupings of three.
The man was fairly exacting in his habits—she would hazard a guess that there should have been three statues on the mantel. A missing god statue?
She frowned at the mantelpiece, thinking back to the multitudinous statuary she had seen at the marketplace.
The statues were usually beautiful carved by the locals and painted with the brightly colored dyes the country produced in vivid abundance.
There were dozens of Hindu gods, but Sophia knew a few of the most easily recognized ones.
Vishnu, Kali, . . . and Brahma? She didn’t know why the detail mattered. It probably didn’t signify anything at all, except that a man had been murdered in this room with a heavy object, and finding it might lead them to the attacker.