CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gabe felt the force of the kick reverberate up his leg. The door flew open with a splintering crack as the iron lock ripped out of the frame. It banged back against the wall, and the sound jarred through the inn and shattered what was left of the early morning quiet.
In the bed, a ginger-haired woman screamed and scrambled to sit up. She clasped the blanket to her front but not before her bare breasts were exposed to the morning light.
Blinking rapidly, Adam sat up next to her and winced hard from what Gabe assumed was a pounding hangover. A deep purple-black bruise marked his chin where Gabe had punched him last night. Not for the first time since then, he regretted not being able to pulp his brother even more.
Gabe strode into the room. Not caring that guests were gathering in the hallway to crane their necks to see what was going on—or that Adam was as naked as the woman shrieking next to him—Gabe yanked his brother out of bed and slammed him back against the wall.
He shoved his forearm beneath Adam’s chin and pinned him to the boards by his throat.
“Where’s Alice?” Gabe demanded through clenched teeth.
“What the hell are you—”
“You took her.” He rammed his forearm against Adam’s throat. “What did you do with her?”
“Nothing!” His fingers tore at Gabe’s forearm as he gasped for breath, but he couldn’t break free of Gabe’s firm hold.
“I haven’t seen her since last night at Grangely.
” When Gabe’s hold on his throat tightened, he half-rasped, half-gurgled, “I didn’t take her!
You kicked me out of the house, remember?
Under the footman’s watch so I wouldn’t take anything.
So how could I have taken a child, for Christ’s sake?
” His eyes flared with anger. “I came here and had a good time with Katie. A very good time, until a minute ago.”
The prostitute had stopped screaming long enough to wrap the blanket around herself and slip from bed. When Adam mentioned her name, she froze as she was bending down to collect her clothes from the floor. Humiliation turned her face nearly as red as her hair.
“I’ve been here all night.” Adam nodded toward the woman. “Ask her!”
Gabe slid a furious look at the prostitute who straightened and held her clothes pressed tightly to her chest. “Was he?”
She nodded. “All night, since ‘bout midnight.”
Gabe shoved Adam against the wall one more time for good measure and stepped back. He dropped his hands to his sides but kept his fists clenched.
The prostitute tightened the blanket around herself, clinging to whatever trace amount of dignity she still possessed.
“An’ I expect t’ be paid well for it, too.
” She looked at Tom Brown as the innkeeper stood in the doorway and did his best to prevent the other guests from enjoying the spectacle.
“Ye told me to keep ’im occupied ’til noon, too.
I’m owed at least two days’ blunt for it, I figure.
” Then she slid a disgusted look over Adam and jabbed her chin into the air. “Or more.”
“Go now, Katie,” Brown ordered and angrily gestured her to leave the room. “We’ll settle up later. Go on!”
Her mouth snapped shut. With a toss of her head and a bounce of her mussed red curls, she hurried out of the room and past the laughing guests gathered in the hall.
“There’s nothing to see here!” Brown shooed the guests away. “Be on yer way, with ya.”
With a parting nod to Gabe and a grimace at Adam, he closed the door.
“Gabe.” Helena approached Gabe’s side. “At least let him put on some clothes, will you?”
Gabe snatched up a pair of discarded trousers lying on the chair and flung them at Adam, smacking him in the face.
Helena turned around so Adam could pull on his trousers in private, but Gabe didn’t trust him enough to turn his back.
“What the hell is going on?” Adam demanded as he yanked his trousers up over his hips and buttoned his fall. “Christ! To burst into a man’s room like that—”
“I’m paying for this room,” Gabe reminded him, barely above a growl. “Technically, it’s mine to burst into any time I damned well please.”
“There was a woman in here whom you—”
“I’m paying for her, too.”
“Gabe,” Helena gently warned as she turned around to face Adam. “Alice is missing,” she explained. “I went to the nursery this morning, and she was gone.”
Adam froze. “Missing?” An expression of genuine confusion flashed over his face. “How can that be with that guard dog of a nanny?”
“You tell us,” Gabe demanded. His patience was wearing thin. “You threatened to take her away last night. Looks like you did just that.”
“I had nothing to do with her after she left the dining room.” He furiously pulled on his shirt over his head and shoved the tail beneath his waistband. “Did you check the house and grounds? You know how she loves to sneak out.”
“Nanny Potts is missing, too,” Helena answered, coming forward to put her hand on Gabe’s right arm, most likely to keep him from punching Adam. Again.
“Well, there you have it.” Adam pulled up his braces over his shoulders and slipped on his waistcoat. “They went out for a walk or to play.” He muttered beneath his breath as he buttoned the waistcoat, “God knows that pinched-face guard dog of a nanny wouldn’t have let Alice out of her sight.”
“They didn’t go out at dawn to play,” Gabe corrected.
“Not on the morning of our wedding,” Helena added quietly but avoided making eye contact with either brother. The sting of that quiet addition pierced him, but now was not the time to address that. One emergency at a time.
“Where are they?” Gabe demanded.
“I don’t know!” Adam snatched up his boots from beneath the bed and sat on the chair. He stomped his foot into each. “Maybe somebody else took her, then, to do you the favor of keeping her out of your hair until the wedding.”
“No one else took her.”
“How do you know?” He shot Gabe a furious look of irritation. “You’ve burst into the rooms of all your other guests from last night, then?”
“It had to be you,” Gabe insisted. “There was no sign of struggle, no noise—she knew whoever left with her, and random kidnappers wouldn’t have known the layout of the house and where to find the nursery.
Nanny Potts certainly wouldn’t have gone with any of the other guests.
She would have put up a fight, cried out for the footmen—”
“Goddamn it! I didn’t take her!” With exasperation, Adam shoved himself to his feet.
“I threatened taking her last night only to rile you up and give you both one last parting jab. You deserved it after the way you treated me.” Adam’s eyes gleamed with petty revenge when Helen’s grip tightened visibly on Gabe’s arm.
“What the hell would I want with a child and her bulldog—”
Adam froze, except for his face which paled almost instantly. Then his shoulders sagged as the thought which had struck him visibly seeped through him.
“The nanny,” he said quietly, his eyes moving between Gabe and Helena and his mouth grimacing with stunned realization. “She must have taken Alice. It was her.”
Gabe’s chest tightened with frustration. Adam was clearly stalling…and playing them for fools. “Why would she do that?”
“God knows, but she overhead us arguing last night. Maybe she got the idea to kidnap Alice herself, or maybe someone else is paying her to do it. With all the activity surrounding the wedding, all the people coming and going, they probably thought it was the perfect time to kidnap the duke’s daughter and demand a king’s ransom.
” When Gabe began to interrupt, he scowled.
“But not me. For God’s sake, that nanny hates me!
She would never have left with me, no matter what lies I could have spun her.
” When he realized Gabe wasn’t convinced, he ran his hand through his hair and gestured angrily toward Grangely Park.
“Think—who else could have taken Alice without a struggle and without leaving word?”
Gabe looked down at Helena. Her sickened expression told him she believed his brother’s argument.
God help him, so did he.
“Nanny Potts.” He turned toward Helena. “She couldn’t have gone far, not without a private carriage and not with a child in tow.
If she took the stagecoach, she can’t have more than a couple of hours lead time on us.
” He touched her cheek. “Go back to Grangely and have the servants expand the search into the village. Ask Larkin and Mrs. Brimley to speak with all the merchants and ask if anyone has seen them. I’ll check with Brown about the morning stagecoach and ride on after them.
If they took the coach, they can only go along one road out of the village. ”
“No,” she replied. “I’m coming with you.”
“So am I,” Adam piped up.
The offer surprised him, but Gabe glanced dismissingly over his shoulder at Adam. “I think you’ve done enough.”
“I mean it,” Adam said resolutely. “I want to come with you. We can cover twice as much ground, and Helena can remain here to lead the search on the estate.” When Gabe hesitated to agree, he added apologetically, “Let it be my way of making amends for how I’ve behaved since I arrived home.
I was a damned fool to think I could blackmail money from you.
I see that now, and Alice had nothing to do with any of the animosity between us.
It was all me.” He looked pleadingly at Helena.
“I want to help. And then, I’ll leave and never bother you again. I promise.”
Gabe gave a tight nod of consent. But it wasn’t Adam’s argument that convinced him to accept his brother’s help. It was the pleading look on Helena’s face, and Gabe would do anything to make Helena happy. “But if you slow me down, I’ll leave you behind.”
“I’d hope so.” Adam grinned, grabbed up his coat, and pulled it on as he hurried from the room.
Helena stopped Gabe just long enough to give a quick kiss of appreciation to his cheek for not committing murder. He didn’t possess the same faith in Adam that she did, but he prayed she wouldn’t be too disappointed when she eventually realized what Gabe had known all along—
His little brother was irredeemable.
They found the innkeeper back in his place in the public room behind the counter that served as the heart of the inn—guest registration by day, bar by night, and post office every afternoon.
It also served as the ticket office for the stagecoach and all horse and carriage rentals for the village.
He busied himself by wiping down a set of glasses with a towel.
But the man was still agitated by that morning’s events upstairs, and around them in the room, gossip swirled about the local duke who had stormed into the room and yanked a naked man from his bed.
By nightfall, Gabe knew, the rumors would have grown until the prostitute became the duke’s wife, and the man he’d yanked from the bed killed in a duel behind the barns.
He’d had more than enough experience with slander and gossip to know how it transformed from the truth.
Yet for the first time in his life, he didn’t care.
“Lady Alice is missing,” Gabe told the innkeeper.
Brown stopped in mid wipe. “How can I help?”
“We think her nanny took her,” Helena told him. “Mary Potts. Have you seen her?”
He shook his head and set down the glass. “I wouldn’t know her nanny from a stranger at the docks,” he admitted. “No offense, Miss, but the goings-on at the big house and who’s employed to mind the wee one doesn’t claim much of my attention.”
“No.” Her shoulders slumped as she murmured in defeat, “I can’t imagine it would.”
“I did sell tickets to the mail coach this morning a few hours before dawn to a lone woman traveling with a child.” He shook his head and leaned his large palms on the countertop.
“Twasn’t a girl she had with her, though, but a boy.
The woman said she was the boy’s auntie and was taking him back to his kin in London. ”
“Could they have been in disguise?” Gabe pressed. “A girl dressed as a boy?”
“Suppose so.” He rubbed beefy fingers at his nape as he pondered that.
“I didn’t get a good look at the child. She told the lad to wait just outside the door while she came in to buy the seats.
Called the boy George.” Guilt darkened his round face.
“I would never have let that woman leave if I’d thought the child was Lady Alice, Your Grace. ”
“It’s not your fault,” Gabe assured him. “Are you certain she departed on the stagecoach to London?”
“Aye.” He nodded emphatically. “She complained ‘bout the state o‘ the seats. Said they were filthy and smelled to high heaven.”
“That would be Nanny Potts, all right,” Helena confirmed beneath her breath.
“When did they leave?” Gabe asked.
“About two hours ago.”
“Thank you.” Gabe took Helena’s arm to escort her from the inn. If they rode hard, they could catch up to the coach before the next change of teams. “Let’s go.”
Adam stepped up to the counter beside them and told the innkeeper, “I need to rent a horse.” He tossed a coin onto the counter. “The best you have.”
Mr. Brown snatched up the coin and waved to a groom sitting in front of the fire, eating a breakfast of yesterday’s leftover stew and brown bread. The groom pulled at the brim of his cap and hurried over.
“You two go on,” Adam urged Gabe and Helena.
“The woman Brown sold those tickets to has to be the nanny, so there’s no point in Helena remaining behind to search the estate.
Besides,” he added, his voice growing softer, “Alice is probably frightened and will want her new mother there to comfort her.”
Helena bit her lip and nodded.
“I’ll get the horse and catch up with you,” Adam assured them. “Most likely before you reach the old turnpike crossroads.”
Gabe’s gut tightened. Adam was lying. He knew it the same way old sailors sensed oncoming storms in their bones.
Yet he silently took Helena’s arm and led her out of the inn to their waiting horses.
He bent down and cupped his hands for her to step into, then lifted her up to her saddle and helped her settle onto her seat.
She looked over her shoulder at the inn. “Should we wait for Adam?”
Gabe shook his head. He knew he’d never see his brother again. To reassure her, though, he repeated Adam’s lie, “He’ll catch up before the crossroads.”
Then he mounted his horse, tapped his heels to the gelding’s sides, and started off with Helena closely behind. He didn’t look back.