Chapter 18
Frederick noticed it at the far end of the second hour.
He had been watching for Birchall. Not continuously, not in any way that would suggest he was watching. He kept track of things in a room that required tracking. He knew where Birchall was the way a person knows where a window is without turning to look at it.
And then Birchall was not there.
Frederick looked at the terrace doors, which were both closed.
He looked toward the main entrance, which he could see from his position.
Neither yielded anything. Then, he moved to the side of the room and found a footman whom he sensed had been doing this a very long time and had good peripheral vision.
“The man I was watching,” Frederick said quietly as he handed him a few coins. “Near the terrace an hour ago. Tall. Dark evening coat. He has left?”
The footman, who had the discretion of his profession, said, “Approximately fifteen minutes past, Your Grace. He called for his carriage on the south side.”
Frederick said, “Thank you,” and felt something settle in his chest that was not calm.
Fifteen minutes.
He stood for a moment and thought about it. He was perhaps being unreasonable. Birchall left a ball. Men left balls. Men left early for any number of reasons, for cards, for a supper engagement elsewhere, for tiredness or indifference, for a brothel. It was not anything of consequence.
Except… Birchall stared at me twice. At Rachel twice.
He had looked at both of them with the focused attention of a man who was not simply being sociable.
Rathbourne House is three streets away, and Anna is there.
He was moving before he had finished the thought. He came along the edge of the room and found Thomas in conversation with a redheaded woman near the refreshment table, which took only thirty seconds to locate because Thomas was usually near something either interesting or drinkable.
“Frederick.” Thomas registered his face, and the woman ceased to exist, at least temporarily. He turned to her with a brief apology she received with the grace of someone who knew exactly what she was looking at, and then he was beside Frederick. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Birchall left fifteen minutes ago. His carriage went south.” Frederick kept his voice level. “I need someone to take Rachel home.”
Thomas’s face did not change in any dramatic way. It went still and calm, in the manner of a man who had received information and reorganized accordingly. “Go. I’ll bring her home,” he said.
“She is not to know immediately that I have gone.” He was already looking across the room. “I don’t want her alarmed. She can be told I had a headache.”
“Rachel will believe your headache when she is shown the medical certificate,” Thomas said, which was accurate. “But I will manage it. I’ll find Lady Oldbarrow, she’s in the card room. Go.”
He was down the stairs and through the entrance hall and out the front door before the footman had fully registered his intention. He did not wait for the carriage. It was three streets and the night was cold, and he moved through it in the way of a man with somewhere specific to be.
The lights of Rathbourne House were visible before he had turned the last corner. He walked faster.
Please be all right, Anna.
Anna liked that Rathbourne House was quieter than others she had visited in London, a tribute to the Duke’s efficiencies. It was even quieter than Derbyshire, or perhaps in a different way.
At Rathbourne Hall, there was the quiet of open country and more space, land and sky absorbing sound. Here the quiet was intentional, thick walls and good carpets holding the city at bay, so that the noise of the street arrived muffled. She had come to find it peaceful.
She was in the sitting room with a hot cup of tea and an old copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho when she heard the entrance hall. Not a knock. A door. Then a crash. Something heavy, going over and toppling, and then voices.
Something is not right…
She was on her feet before she had decided to stand, her book on the floor with a thwack. She crossed the room and was in the corridor and at the top of the stairs, and then she stopped. The air in her lungs froze as she heard his voice.
“Where is my wife?”
Birchall…
Anna looked over a railing and saw him in the entrance hall below.
He was broader than she remembered, or perhaps it was that she had spent months trying not to remember him clearly.
He was in his overcoat, hat still on, which meant he had not been received.
He had come in the way he did everything Anna imagined, by declaring the obstacle insufficient and barreling through it.
Anna stifled a shriek when she realized that Simmons was on the floor to the left of the door, half-propped against the wall and one hand pressed to his jaw. Birchall followed their gaze and looked up.
“My wife,” he said, and smiled. “There you are, dear.”
She came down the rest of the stairs, although she did not know she was going to do this until she had. Her hands were tight at her sides. She willed them to remain steady. She forced herself to breathe calmly.
“Lord Birchall.” Her voice came out even and soft. She was grateful for it, as she did not wish for any other members of the staff to suffer the same fate as Simmons. “You must leave.”
“Must I?” He looked around the entrance hall with a wide smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He looked at the door. He looked back at her. “No, I don’t think so. Not until I’ve retrieved my wife.”
“You’ve hurt the butler,” she said sharply, her heart aching for Simmons.
“He was obstructing me.”
“He was doing his duty!”
“I do not give a damn.” He said it agreeably, the way he said everything. “I’ve waited long enough for the obstruction to end on its own.” He took a step toward the center of the hall. She did not move back. “I knew you were here, you understand. From the very beginning!”
His eyes moved over her, with no more emotion than a man taking stock of his wardrobe.
He licked his lips. “Your cousin told me that a solicitor’s employee had been making inquiries around the staff at Edgeware House.
Discreet inquiries.” A pause. “Not discreet enough, though. I’ve known for some weeks that you’d found help.
Who else would it be, but His Grace, given his sister’s connection to you?
” He said it without heat, the way a person describes the solution to a very simple problem.
“I’ve only been waiting for the right moment, you see. ”
“And you think that moment is now?” she asked. Despite her best efforts, her voice faltered.
“His Grace is at a ball. His sister is with him And here we are.”
“Yes,” Anna said as her heart began to race.
“So very composed,” he said. “I always knew you would be. You look—”
“What do you want?” she said.
“What I am owed.” He said it simply. “You are my wife. You left on the morning of our wedding. I have spent weeks managing the consequences of that, and I have been remarkably patient.” He tilted his head. “Enough of this farce. I want you to come home, to our bed.”
“I will not go anywhere with you.”
“You are my property. You don’t have a choice—”
“I have every choice!”
Anna could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she breathed through it.
She had thought about this moment and what it would be like.
She had thought about it since she left him at the inn yard, and she had thought about it in the months since.
She had written the statement for Barnes; she had put it in her own words, and it had asked her to be precise about what had happened to her, and being precise had done something useful. It had given her the shape of it.
“You forced me to marry you,” she said as she took a small step toward him.
“In a church, in front of a priest. Under coercion. I did not consent. I said so at the altar.” She held his gaze.
“I have a solicitor. I have witnesses. I have a statement. What you did to me on the morning of our wedding will be placed before the court, and I promise you, it will not reflect well on you.”
Something moved across his face, but not the anger she expected. Something colder and more patient glinted in his pale green eyes.
“No one will believe you,” he said with a sneer.
“Perhaps not everyone,” she said. “But the attorney believes me. And the Duke of Rathbourne believes me. And courts have a way of being persuaded by men of higher rank.” She kept her chin up. “I do not think you want the happenings of that morning examined very closely. I suggest you leave.”
A silence. He took a step toward her. She held her ground.
“I am not going to hurt you,” he said, as if she had suggested it. “Despite what you might have been told about me. I have never—”
“You assaulted the butler.”
Birchall shrugged. “He is a servant, I’m sure he’ll be fine.” He took another step toward Anna. “Come with me now, and I will say nothing further about any of this. We will go home, and take care of things quietly, and no one else needs to be involved.”
“No,” she said.
“Anna—”
“No.” Her voice did not rise. All she wanted was the peace she had started that evening with. “I am not going anywhere with you,” she said. “You can stand in this hall for as long as you like. I am not going.”
Suddenly, the front door opened, and relief crashed over Anna.
The Duke had arrived.
Frederick burst through the door without announcement, and stopped. He saw Simmons slumped on the floor. Anna. Birchall.
“Birchall,” he growled.
Birchall turned and looked at Frederick, and did not pretend to be surprised. “Your Grace, this is a surprise,” he said. “The ball ended early?”
“Get out of my house,” Frederick said.
“I am retrieving my wife. You have no legal claim to this—”
“You are leaving my property,” he growled as he strode further into the hall. “Immediately, and without further discussion.”
“She is legally bound to me.”
“She is in my house. Under my protection. And you struck my butler.” Frederick’s voice had the quality of something pulled tight and held there by considerable effort.
He crossed the hall in four strides and took Birchall by the arm. It was not as vulgar as a grab, but something more deliberate, and moved him toward the door.
“Take your hands—”
“Silence.”
Frederick opened the front door with his free hand and put Birchall through it onto the front step. He followed him out and pulled the door almost closed behind them. He could see Anna peering out from the side window.
Birchall had recovered himself on the steps. He was straightening his coat. The pleasant expression was gone.
“You’ll hear from my solicitors,” he said. “Kidnapping, Rathbourne. That is what this is! I will have you before a magistrate—”
“Go ahead,” Frederick said. “Try it.”
“You cannot—”
“I assure you, I can. You are welcome to file whatever petition you choose. I will answer it. And when I answer it, I will answer it in detail, and the detail will include the manner in which you obtained a special license, and what was done to Miss Cartwell outside that church. All of it.” A pause.
“You told two men at the ball tonight that your wife is in the country. You said she might be with child. I heard you.” He let that sit for a moment.
“You will think carefully about whether you want a court to know she has been living in my house for two months and that your story is a fabrication, and what that says about the marriage and about you.”
Birchall said nothing.
“You don’t want this,” Frederick said. “Not the scandal. Not the examination. Not the story of how she left.” He looked at him steadily.
“You want the annulment as little as I want anyone asking questions about my household. The difference is that I can afford the examination and you cannot.” A pause. “Be gone.”
“She will not come out of this well,” Birchall said, finally, his jaw a thin line. “When this becomes public—”
“She will come out of it alive,” Frederick said. “Which is more than she could expect from continuing in the arrangement you presented.”
Birchall looked up once at the window where Anna was standing, and Frederick watched her look at him. With a huff, he went down the steps.
Frederick watched him go until his carriage at the end of the street had pulled away and was gone. Then he turned and came back through the door.