Chapter Thirteen
“My lady.”
Pruett’s voice through the door was wrong. Victoria knew it before she opened it, because in nine years Pruett had never knocked twice in such quick succession or turned the handle before receiving an answer.
“What has happened?”
“She is gone.” Pruett’s hands were shaking, and she was not a woman whose hands shook. “Miss Sophy. Sir Roland has taken her.”
For a moment, the words failed to signify.
Victoria had imagined this morning a thousand times without meaning to, in the small hours when sleep would not come and in the instant whenever a door opened too quickly. She had called it morbidness, grief borrowed before it was due.
Now the thing she had feared had entered through the front door in daylight, and all those rehearsals bought her only enough composure to make no sound.
“What happened?” Her voice emerged level. “Tell me in order. Do not spare me anything.”
“My lady, pray sit down.”
“I will not sit. Tell me.”
“Sir Roland came half an hour ago with Mr Dabney, a tipstaff, and two other men. They had a coach waiting and a paper bearing the Chancery seal.” Pruett drew a broken breath.
“He knew his lordship was from home. He said an application had been made upon evidence that Miss Sophy might be removed beyond the court’s reach, and that she was to be placed temporarily in her testamentary guardian’s keeping until the matter could be heard. ”
“He obtained an order without our knowing.”
“Or brought something made to look like one. Mrs Whitlock could not tell which, and neither could any man in the house. She sent the boot-boy for his lordship and another servant for Mr Cole before she admitted them beyond the hall. She made Dabney read every word aloud and demanded time to have the seal examined.”
“And he refused.”
“He said delay would itself be a breach of the order. The officer said he was bound to execute it.” Pruett’s voice faltered.
“Mrs Whitlock barred the stair. She told them the child would not be produced until the paper had been verified. Then the officer warned her that anyone obstructing him would be taken up, and the other men moved towards the servants.”
Victoria closed her eyes once.
“She could have ordered them resisted.”
“She nearly did. Thomas and the footmen were ready. But Sir Roland had brought witnesses, an officer, and a paper that appeared lawful. If the servants had struck them, they would have been arrested, and Miss Sophy taken in the struggle all the same. Mrs Whitlock would not give them the violent household they had come prepared to report.”
The precautions had not failed. Roland had passed through them wearing the law’s face.
“And Sophy?”
Pruett’s mouth tightened.
“She heard the voices and came out before I could keep her back. She said she was not to leave without your word.”
Victoria’s breath stopped.
“Sir Roland told her you had already consented and would follow directly. She did not believe him. She asked for you, and then for Lord Harwood.”
“And when neither of us came?”
“She held her doll very tightly and would not take his hand. The officer said she must go, and Mrs Whitlock begged her not to be frightened. In the end, I went with her to the coach. I would not let those men carry her.”
“You went with her?”
“To the door. They would not permit me inside the carriage. Sir Roland said her own nurse would be provided at the house.” Pruett’s face crumpled, then steadied by force.
“I took down the coachman’s badge and the number painted on the panel.
Thomas followed on horseback until one of the men saw him and turned upon him near Cavendish Square.
Mrs Whitlock has already sent the direction to Mr Cole. ”
The household had not stood by helplessly. They had delayed, observed, followed, and sent word. They had done everything short of beginning a fight around a terrified child.
Victoria heard the cruelty in her own earlier thought and put it away before it could become words.
“Was she crying?”
“No, my lady. She kept looking back towards the house. That was worse.”
“Was she hurt?”
“Not that I saw. Sir Roland was very gentle with her.”
Of course he had been. Roland’s violence always wore gloves.
Victoria turned towards the window. Feeling became suddenly too expensive, and the old coldness rose to meet the cost. It had carried her through the worst years of her first marriage, shutting grief away until the practical work was done. She had thought herself finished with it.
Now she welcomed it back.
“He timed the note,” she said. “Crayle’s meeting was never only an offer. It drew Elias away to examine the rooms Cole had chosen and kept Cole occupied with the arrangements, while Roland came here with a paper prepared in advance.”
Pruett said nothing.
“He knew the household would be guarded. That was why he did not try to slip past the guards. He came through the front door with an officer and made resistance look like proof of everything he had alleged against us.”
“My lady…”
“Get Mrs Whitlock. Have the coach brought round. I want the names of every property Sir Roland or Lady Agatha may use, every posting-house upon the northern and western roads, and every direction Thomas can remember. Send someone to Amelia and another to Lady Maribel. No one is to repeat outside this house that we do not know where Sophy has been taken.”
Pruett hesitated.
“And do not look at me with pity,” Victoria said. “Not yet. I cannot afford it yet.”
The door opened without a knock, and Elias stood upon the threshold.
The boot-boy’s message, the journey back, and the final understanding crossed his face within a single second. Victoria saw his anger rise and find nothing in the room upon which it could usefully fall.
“Tell me she is not hurt,” he said.
“She was not hurt when they took her. Roland wants the appearance of a child quietly received into her guardian’s care. He will preserve that appearance as long as it serves him.”
Elias’s hands had closed at his sides. He opened them deliberately, one finger at a time.
“He came with an order.”
“With something bearing a seal. We do not yet know whether it was genuine, improperly obtained, or forged.”
“I should have been here.”
“That is why Crayle sent the note.”
“I should have known.”
“So should I. Neither of us did.” Victoria crossed to him. “Look at me, Elias. Not at the wall.”
He obeyed.
“There is no one here to strike,” he said. “He has contrived it so that every servant who resisted would have appeared violent and every servant who obeyed would have appeared to consent. I have spent my life being a man others hesitate to cross, and this morning it has counted for nothing.”
“No,” Victoria said. “You cannot frighten a document.” Her voice remained steady. “But we can discover who issued it, upon what evidence, and where it sent her. Then we can defeat it.”
A change came over him then. The anger did not leave him; it settled into something colder and more useful.
“Cole,” Elias said. “We need him here at once. If the order is false, improperly obtained, or founded upon a lie, he will find where it fails.”
“And Crayle,” Victoria said. “His evidence may be the quickest means of proving why Roland wanted Sophy in his keeping.”
“There is still a risk that his offer is part of the same design.”
“There is. But caution belonged to us before Roland took her. We cannot spend hours preserving ourselves from a trap while Sophy is in his hands.”
Elias looked at her.
“This morning I would have argued.”
“This morning she was here.”
“Yes.” His jaw tightened. “We obtain Crayle’s statement, if he has one worth buying. Cole examines the order. And we find where Roland has taken her.”
He raised his hands towards her face, then stopped short of touching her.
“We will bring her home,” he said.
Victoria closed the last distance herself, setting one hand over his wrist.
“I believe you.”
The trust came without effort. On another morning, she might have marvelled at it. Now she merely used it to remain standing.
The direction was found within the hour.
Mrs Whitlock had already set the household to work: the coachman’s badge led to a London yard, and a groom there admitted that Lady Agatha’s travelling carriage had been ordered for the Hertfordshire road.
A second message, from a cousin of one of the Harwood grooms employed in the Hemsworth stables, confirmed that the old family house was being prepared for an unexpected arrival.
Victoria had visited it once, during her wedding journey. She remembered grey stone, long corridors, and a household trained to treat the Hemsworth name as an argument no outsider could answer.
“Hertfordshire,” Elias said, reading the direction Cole had set down. “He has taken her to the place where his authority will appear least questionable.”
“And where the household will recognise no authority but his family’s,” Victoria said.
“He expects us to arrive without legal standing, demand the child, and give him precisely the scene he requires.”
“Then we shall not oblige him.” She folded the paper. “Cole examines the order and obtains whatever authority is needed to reverse it. The meeting with Crayle proceeds as arranged, but sooner. If he can prove Roland’s part in this, we need his statement before we reach Hertfordshire.”
Elias nodded. “We do not go to the house until we have the means to compel its doors.”
“I will not have Sophy watch us turned away.” Victoria’s grip tightened upon the paper. “She told them she was not to leave without my consent. I mean to walk into that house with proof that she was right.”
Elias regarded her for a moment.
“When I proposed marriage, I did not yet understand the strength of the woman before me. I do now.”
Victoria considered that.
“So do I.”