Chapter Nine
Christmas morning.
Various places in the inn.
Christmas day dawned bright and shining, all blue sky and white earth and brilliantly golden sun. Pinning his attention to the floor, Frye drew his bedchamber draperies closed as Freddie entered.
“The Mail will shortly venture forth,” Freddie said. “When the coach departs, Sheridan intends to follow.”
“He could have closed the deal here. We gave him ample opportunity last night, and she is a softhearted soul. Why didn’t he?”
“Because he is not our villain.” Freddie spoke Frye’s thoughts. “But in the event that we are mistaken in this, I will ride with him now.”
Frye would remain at this inn, at least until sundown. The brilliant snow and sparkling sunshine were a disaster in the making for him. They rendered the inn his prison.
“Send word if there is any to send,” Frye said.
Freddie clapped him on the shoulder. “Solve the mystery.”
But Frye could not respond according to their ritual.
“After this,” he said, “I will return to Kentwood permanently.”
Freddie remained unsmiling. He had never shown Frye pity and he had never told him how to live his life. He had always been the best and most honorable of friends, just as Greyson Jones was. Their trusted companionship had allowed him a measure of safety away from his estate. In return he would do anything for them.
He knew that at least part of Freddie’s wish to see him married and settled was Freddie’s own desire to return home to his country where turmoil was brewing anew.
“I will be well, my friend,” he said.
“I know you will, mon ami.” Freddie gripped his shoulder tightly for a moment then released it. “In the meantime, there is a beautiful girl who has not yet left this place. Give yourself a gift. For Christmas.” He winked.
Then he was gone, and Frye closed the door to his bedchamber and shut out the voice in his head telling him that Charlotte also deserved a goodbye. But he had already seen her before the sun rose: across the field, breeches soaked to her knees, hair flopping on her back in a queue, running as swiftly through the snowfall as she had run as a child.
She did not need a goodbye from him. The best thing he could do now was to stay far away from her.
Best for her, even if not for him.
“My lady?” The soft scratch came at her bedchamber door.
Charlotte laid the last of her clothes in the traveling trunk and went to the door. Sally was in the kitchen packing a snack for the road. Kingstag Castle was not far, but with the snow and ice on the roads, the journey could be slow.
“Good morning, Miss Mapplethorpe. Happy Christmas! Wasn’t that a marvelous party last night?” All except the part where she danced with the Duke of Frye and then he kissed her senseless. Or perhaps especially those parts. She was undecided.
“Oh, yes, a delightful party.” Miss Mapplethorpe’s fingers were twisting agitatedly before her. “But, oh, dear me, my lady, I am afraid something awful has occurred.”
“Oh, no.” Charlotte grasped her hands. “Do tell me.”
“My niece is gone.”
“Gone? Has the Mail Coach left without you?”
“Oh, not at all. Calliope departed at dawn, it seems, with Mr. George Clayton.”
“Departed with him? Alone?”
Miss Mapplethorpe nodded and now tears crested the rims of her eyes.
“Good heavens. But why would she— Well, I suppose I understand why.” Intimately. Sometimes, after all, a lady did not act on what she knew to be in her best interests. “What of his parents?”
“Young George went without their knowledge too. He left a letter for them, just as she left this letter for me.” With trembling hands she offered a sheet of paper.
Charlotte read it swiftly. “It is a proper elopement, it seems, against the wishes of his parents. And your wishes, I assume?”
“Oh, dear me, I would have been glad to allow him to court Calliope. He seems a fine young man. But to steal her away from me . . .” She looked paler than usual.
Charlotte took her arm. “Mr. Church and Mr. Fortier will be able to help us.”
“What delightful young men,” she said miserably. “But I am really not certain, dear Lady Charlotte, how they could possibly—oh, ohh—” She wavered a bit.
“You are very pale, Miss Mapplethorpe. Before you say another word you must calm yourself.” She led the frail woman into her own bedchamber and sat her down by the hearth, and tucked a blanket around her. “Sally will bring you tea and look after you while I get help. Please don’t fret. We will find her, I am certain of it.”
Running downstairs, she looked in the taproom. It was empty. After poking her head into the kitchen to bid Sally wait on Miss Mapplethorpe, she threw her cloak over her shoulders and went outside. The Mail Coach stood in the yard, its team chomping to be off after their long rest. The Andersons were all climbing into it. Neither the Duke of Frye nor Lord Fortier were aboard.
She ran through the brilliantly glittering yard to the stable.
The ostler informed her that Mr. Fortier had hired the inn’s only saddle horse, and had departed with Mr. Sheridan. He had not seen Mr. Church that morning.
Was he waiting for her? Perhaps intending to ride to Kingstag with her?
No. Not after what he had said. I have no intention of marrying. Ever.
But that kiss.
That kiss. She was thoroughly confused. He had kissed her, admitted wanting to kiss her for years, and then told her they mustn’t.
He was tangling her up inside and she adamantly did not want that. For two and a half years she had practiced tackling challenges directly. She had gotten so proficient at it that, when her father demanded she return home, she had felt certain she could tackle the challenge of watching her friend marry the man she loved.
She would not hide from this now. Never again.
“Fields,” she said, running past him. “I shan’t need the carriage yet.”
She ran into the inn and, shaking off the snow clinging to her hem, up to the duke’s bedchamber.
He answered her knock.
“You are still here!”
“Charlotte.” It sounded as though he hadn’t spoken in hours. “Are you departing now?”
“Calliope has eloped with George Clayton. She left a message informing her aunt. They departed at dawn and they must have gone on foot. Did Lord Fortier leave with Mr. Sheridan this morning?”
“Yes. He is traveling with him on a pretext, to remain close in the event that Sheridan tries his wiles upon Miss Mapplethorpe at the next stop.” His brow dipped. “But she will not board the coach if her niece is missing.”
“No. She is enormously distressed, of course. I’ve just calmed her down, but—”
“But you want me to go after Miss Jameson and return her here.”
She nodded. “Yes, of course.”
He drew a deep breath. “I am sorry, Charlotte. I cannot go with you.”
“Horace, I heard you say that you will never marry. In asking you to chase after them I am not asking you to elope with me. Obviously. You needn’t worry on that score. For heaven’s sake, do you imagine I am the sort of woman who would want to entrap a man into marriage?”
His eyes sparkled and it seemed as though he were biting back a smile. “I think I am starting to wish you were.”
“I don’t know how to interpret that. But I don’t have time to now anyway. For while you are making cryptic comments, Miss Jameson is running farther and farther away from her aunt, with a virtual stranger.”
He came into the corridor. “I will speak with Clayton and his wife. But I need you to stay at a distance from me. All right?”
“You are ridiculous.”
“I am not.”
“And a scoundrel,” she added.
“That, however, is true.”
“You are standing within six inches of me and telling me that I must stay away from you.”
“Contrary to my well-deserved reputation for discipline, when you are near I feel entirely out of control.”
“That is not my problem.”
He smiled. “Also true. But it would help if you said you understood.”
“Of course I don’t understand.” She could not cease looking at his lips. “And I would like to kiss you again. But I don’t suppose we have time for that.”
“We have already had far too much time for that.” He started down the corridor and she knew she should be entirely focused on the missing girl. But his shoulders were so perfectly broad and rigid and she had touched them last night, clung to them, as he had made her feel extraordinary things in every secret and even not-so-secret part of her body.
Now she imagined wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing up against his back and kissing the nape of his neck, and she got dizzy.
At the Claytons’ bedchamber door, with his knock the door swung inward slowly. The room was empty.
“They’ve gone,” he said.
“I was just in the stable and the yard. They were not there.” Now she was twisting her hands together too. “But the ostler said nothing of their departure.”
“Perhaps he was occupied by the Mail Coach’s departure. I will speak with Miss Mapplethorpe.” He stepped close to her and took her hands between his own. His were large and strong and being held by him filled her with peace and a delicious agitation, both at once. “You mustn’t worry. We will find her.”
“You are touching me.”
“I am.”
“You are a horrid hypocrite.”
“I told you,” he said in a low voice. “Out of control.”
Reluctantly she drew away and they went to Miss Mapplethorpe’s room.
Within minutes the gentlewoman was telling the man practiced in subterfuge what she had not admitted to Charlotte: that early that morning when she and the Claytons discovered their young ones missing, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton had said they knew a Bow Street Runner in the neighborhood who could help them find Calliope and George, but his price was far too high for them to pay alone. Miss Mapplethorpe had promptly handed over every shilling in her purse. The Claytons had then gotten into their carriage and driven off.
When Miss Mapplethorpe had finished, and was sobbing into a kerchief monogrammed with the ducal crest, the duke asked Sally to attend her and drew Charlotte into the corridor.
“There is no Bow Street Runner, is there?” she said.
“Not this far from London or at this time of year.”
“Mr. Clayton is the thief for whom you and Lord Fortier are searching. Not Mr. Sheridan.”
“It seems so. I will go after them.” He looked unusually fierce and determined.
“George must know where his parents have gone. I will come with you.”
“No.”
“Of course I will,” she said, moving to the stairs. “He will not have taken her by the main road. His parents easily could have found them that way. And there is another, smaller route I’ve run along that wends away from the inn too. There are only my family’s carriage horses in the stable now. If only we had discovered this before Lord Fortier and Mr. Sheridan departed! Still, Mr. Clayton cannot have taken her far yet. Calliope hasn’t proper footwear for swift walking.”
He grasped her arm and she halted and looked over her shoulder at him.
“You will not come with me,” he said.
“It occurs to me that becoming a duke at age ten is probably not very good preparation for a man to accept the wishes and desires of other people.”
“You are probably right about that.”
“Of course I am.” She dislodged her arm from his grip. “Come along, Your Grace. Time is of the essence.”
He smiled. “I’ll fetch my hat.”
Fields offered to drive, but the duke agreed with Charlotte on the runaways’ likely route, a path too narrow for the carriage. One of the carriage horses, however, could be ridden, and a saddle and bridle were borrowed. The duke insisted that Charlotte ride, declining her invitation to ride double with a single lifted brow and an inscrutable, “Thank you, no.”
Instead, he donned a shabby cloak and pulled its voluminous hood over his head and around his face.
“What on earth is that?” she said. “Part of your commoner disguise?”
“I borrowed it from the ostler. It seems my hat has gone astray.” He laid his hand on the horse’s neck and walked beside her like that the entire way.
Along the byway that wended away from the inn, within a hundred yards Charlotte discovered the couple’s tracks in the snow. Barely a mile from that they found the elopers themselves, tucked in the corner of an old mill, wrapped in each other’s arms, and oblivious to the rest of the world.
Given their tangled limbs, Charlotte thought it lucky they were actually still clothed, although the building was chilly and perhaps Miss Jameson was less of a natural wanton than Charlotte had recently discovered herself to be in the arms of a duke.
The duke’s boots crunched on the ground strewn with frost and bits of grain, and abruptly the couple broke into two pieces.
“Lady Charlotte!” Calliope exclaimed. “Mr. Church! Why ever are you here?”
“We have come looking for you, of course,” Charlotte said. “Your parents, Mr. Clayton, have stolen Miss Mapplethorpe’s money and have disappeared.”
The youth grabbed the girl’s hands.
“I begged them not to do it, darling! I tell you, I begged.”
Calliope turned fraught eyes to the duke. “Is my aunt all right?”
“In fact she is worried to the point of illness,” Charlotte said. “Now do come with me outside while Mr. Church speaks to Mr. Clayton about his parents’ villainy.”
“My lady,” George said stiffly, “forgive me, but I can’t see how my parents’ business is any of either of yours.”
“You have put both Miss Jameson and her aunt in jeopardy, whelp.” The duke did not raise his voice, but it resonated throughout the cavernous space like a bell in a tower. Charlotte got goose bumps all up and down her body. “It is any gentleman’s business to take you to task for it,” he said. “But my first purpose is to find your parents and apprehend them.”
“Miss Jameson, Mr. Clayton,” Charlotte said, “I present to you His Grace, the Duke of Frye.”
“Duke?” George exclaimed and leaped to his feet. His neck constricted in a gulp. “Your Grace, I beg your pardon!” He bowed.
“The duke and his companion, Lord Fortier, tracked your parents to the Fiddler’s Roost, Mr. Clayton. They would have apprehended them there if not for this excursion of yours.”
“I had to protect Calliope,” George said stoutly. “Father and Mother said that if I told anyone of their plans they would abduct her and send her to someplace horrid. I had to keep her safe.”
“You might have asked someone at the inn for assistance,” the duke said. “A mill in the frigid cold is no place to bring a lady, Mr. Clayton.”
“Yes, Your Grace! But it wasn’t to be for long. We only needed to hide today, so that they would give up searching before they must leave.”
“Leave?” Charlotte said. “Leave the inn?”
“Leave England. They’ve tickets for the packet to Cork departing tonight.”
“Cork?” She turned to the duke. “Miss Mapplethorpe’s entire savings are as good as gone, not to mention the poor women they will surely hoodwink in Ireland.”
“Mr. Clayton,” he said. “Return now to the inn with Miss Jameson and wait there until I instruct you otherwise. And know that if you disobey me, I will hunt you down and see you jailed on the charge of abduction. Do you understand?”
The youth nodded swiftly.
The duke turned his summer-blue eyes on the maiden. “Miss Jameson?”
“I understand, Your Grace,” she said in a very small voice.
“All right then. There is a horse outside. Take it. Lady Charlotte and I will follow on foot. Now be off with you.”
Holding hands, the pair scurried toward the door, pulled it wide, and sunlight unfurled across the floor and glittered brilliantly on the snow without, the wind sweeping powder from the roof into shimmering whorls of white and silver, like angels dancing.
The scent of metal was all around.
Dread collared Frye, sucking and hot and prickling.
He stumbled and lost his footing.
“What a gloriously beautiful Christmas day it has turned out to be,” he heard Charlotte say as though through a tunnel.
Then the explosion came in his chest.
“The Claytons cannot have not gone far. As soon as we return to the inn, I will bid Fields harness the—Horace?”
He was on the ground. He fought it.
“Horace!”
Pain crowded him everywhere.
Then he lost control.