He shadowed the open doorway in seconds. Aurelia backed into the courtyard so he could see Tiny.
His curse was obscene as he dropped to his knees to cover the wounded puppy with both big hands. “Call Jack from the stable. He’ll have to deal with this.” He glanced up at Bess. “Did anyone visit you last night?”
Looking terrified, Bess shook her head of wild black hair. “I slept the whole night through. And then the pup crawled in this morning. He did that. He’s got my Rose, I know it.”
“Who?” Aurelia demanded, gesturing for the maid to run to the stable.
Bess started weeping, covering her mouth with her hands as she watched Mr. Madden use her basin of water to clean the dog.
Aurelia waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. She didn’t know anything to say. The missing girls, the injured dog. . . She wanted to weep too. But this was too important to dither in helplessness.
“Bess,” she said sharply, mimicking a tone she’d heard her mother use long ago. “Rose is missing. So is Lady Pascoe’s daughter. If this mysterious he took them, what do you think will happen?”
The woman rocked back and forth, hugging herself. “He doesn’t want Rose. He kicked her and the pup out. He tried to kill my baby.”
“And he thinks you’ll trade the boy for Rose? That’s a trifle mad, isn’t it?” Aurelia asked while Will applied padding to Tiny’s wound.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Tears poured down her weathered cheeks. “But who else would do that?”
“You have to tell us who he is,” Aurelia pleaded. “We can search if we know who to search for!”
Bess only wept hysterically. Had Aurelia been Mr. Madden’s size, she would have shaken her. She had to give the gentleman credit for patience and restraint.
The groom rushed in. Mr. Madden waited until the other man had the dog’s bandage pressed down before he took something from the dog’s mouth, stood up, and walked out. Aurelia rushed after him, prepared to demand answers.
She didn’t have to. He started speaking as soon as she was beside him.
“Tiny relates the intruder’s smell to the same man who hurt him before.” He showed her a torn scrap of cloth. “The dog bit him hard enough to draw blood. I’m giving this scent to the deerhounds. Pascoe needs to send for reinforcements. If they have Emma, this is no longer just about Bess and the babe. You and Bridey need to arm the household, bring everyone inside.”
He said nothing more but let his long strides carry him ahead, in the direction of the stable, expecting her to follow his orders.
Aurelia ran toward the house, mind racing. Bridey met her at the door, and Aurelia spilled all the information in her possession while running for her chamber. Bridey threw commands as they ran.
“What do you think you’re doing?” her cousin asked as Aurelia called for Addy and began stripping off the pretty gown she’d donned in hopes of seeing Mr. Madden at breakfast.
“I should be able to hear the children,” Aurelia reminded her. “If the dogs follow the scent and Mr. Madden comes close, I can hear them and the kidnappers. . .” She had to stop a keening a sob at admitting the dread word. “I cannot let this happen again. I cannot do this to you and Pascoe. I have to help.”
“We don’t know for sure that they’ve been taken,” Bridey said uncertainly. “The twins hide. It could be a game.”
“I listened,” she cried. “I cannot hear the girls anywhere! And they most certainly did not knife a puppy. Did Edward have anything to say?” Aurelia pulled on her silk pantaloons and her riding skirt while her maid helped her into her lace-trimmed cambric shirt.
“He says they all went out to play with the kittens, but he heard the hounds crying because they were penned up in one of the stalls. He left the girls with the kittens to see why the dogs were upset, and he tried to calm them down. But they smelled strangers and ran out, barking. He wasn’t looking for the girls, just following the dogs.”
Aurelia buttoned her jacket and rummaged in a drawer for her riding crop. “How long ago was this?”
“Probably at dawn,” Bridey said in resignation. “Children rise early. The maids are accustomed to them running to the stables as soon as it’s light.”
“An hour ago, then? Were the kittens in a different part of the stable from the dogs?” Aurelia let Addy tut-tut and tie on her riding hat.
“I think so. They were in the loft the other day, but the mother cat could have carried them anywhere. So Edward went one way, the girls went the other. . . I want to go with you but. . .”
“You can’t. Even if you weren’t carrying a child, you can’t,” Aurelia insisted. “Ashford is arriving with his infant heir. They needed to be guarded at all cost, and you and Pascoe must take charge here. Lord Dare will send aid if you request it, won’t he?” Emilia and her husband lived not too far away.
Bridey closed her eyes and swayed. Addy caught her and helped her to a chair.
“I’m all right.” Bridey shook off the maid but sat. “It’s just too unbelievable. I need to search the house, simply to be certain they’re not hiding. They may have fallen asleep somewhere. Yes, we’ll send for Lord Dare and find men we can trust. Take a groom with you to relay messages, please. The duke will kill us if anything happens to you, but they’re children. . .”
“Exactly.” Aurelia hit her crop against her skirt. “I am no longer a child. I can look out for myself. I can hear trouble coming from miles away.” She said that brashly, as if she’d ever done such a thing. “We just need to find their hiding place. Don’t worry. Mr. Madden and I are magic.”
Which was a silly flight of fancy, but enough to cause Bridey to offer a watery smile and make plans as Aurelia pulled on her boots. Maybe the dog hadn’t been knifed. Maybe it had caught on something sharp and the girls were sleeping in the hayloft and this was all for nothing. Anything was possible.
Except she trusted Mr. Madden to know what he was talking about. If he said the dog had been knifed, he’d no doubt been looking into the dog’s mind. As soon as she had her boots on, Aurelia lifted her long skirt and raced for the stairs again.
The men were already in the courtyard, saddled and shouting orders. Aurelia ran to the stable, found Bridey’s sturdy mare, and instructed the lone stable boy to heave on the saddle. She could hear Pascoe and Mr. Madden directing men to ride north to guard Ashford’s coach, to Harrogate and Leeds to men they trusted to provide help, and setting guards around the house. By the time she’d seated herself and rode out, only Mr. Madden, Sir Pascoe, and one of the older grooms remained at the courtyard entrance.
Mr. Madden was pocketing a pistol and sliding a musket into a strap on his saddle. He scowled as Aurelia rode up. “You are not leaving the house.”
“Did Bess give anyone a name?” she asked, ignoring his command.
“Not the one we want, I suspect,” Sir Pascoe answered. “She said he calls himself Crockett, which we already knew. She claims he’s about my height, with brownish hair, a long nose with a bump in the middle, and pock-marked skin. He does not sound like any noble I know.”
Aurelia looked up at Mr. Madden. “I do not hear either of the girls, even though they should be in a panic and screaming loudly. I could hear Rose crying from a long distance last time. He must have done something to quiet them.”
Mr. Madden looked as if he’d like to strangle her. But even if he would not say so aloud, he had to admit that she could be useful. She’d proved it to him before.
“Thank you, my lady,” Sir Pascoe said. “My daughter is more precious than gems to me, but you are equally precious to your father. Be careful and listen to Will. He is experienced in tracking children and villains.” He tipped his hat and rode toward the front drive as if he had completely expected her to join the search.
Left with an angry Mr. Madden, Aurelia experienced a small frisson of fear. She had gone out alone with him once and been completely safe. But that had been on her father’s property. Riding down a public road without her
sisters and with only an unfamiliar groom in accompaniment made her feel vulnerable and exposed.
“Your uncle trusts you implicitly,” she offered, hiding her trepidation by attempting to appease Mr. Madden’s anger. “Which way do the dogs say?”
Apparently, this morning’s four or five sentences were the most he meant to utter. His jaw tightened, his eyes shuttered, and he set the deerhounds loose. The animals raced through the unbarred entrance of the courtyard, down the drive, and took the south road toward the village. Mr. Madden galloped off after them, leaving her in his dust.
Aurelia didn’t ride often. It required too many grooms and usually half a dozen suitors and her sisters. The noise alone would be enough to drive her home. With Mr. Madden, she’d discovered, it was different. As she gave her horse free rein, she heard the hooves of numerous horses scattering in all directions. She heard a farmer cursing in his field and a woman calling to her neighbor, but the sounds were muffled in a way she could not explain other than to think of Mr. Madden as a padded wall between her and the world.
She hoped she could still hear the girls’ cries. She’d heard Rose, even when she’d been riding directly beside him. She simply needed to concentrate. And pray.
Chapter 11
Will had tucked tiny shoes the girls had worn into his pocket. He gave their scent to the dogs along with the scent of the intruder from the scrap of cloth. Even so, he knew his task was futile. If the girls had been stolen, instead of wandering off on their own, they had to have been taken away by horse or wagon. Holding a squirming, kicking child on horseback was impossible—unless the wretch had treated them the same way he had Tiny.
Just the possibility of violence to those children had Will’s blood seething. He clenched the reins too hard and his horse reared in protest. He had to fight for his own control, but having the responsibility of Lady Aurelia complicated his difficulty.
Knowing the hounds would soon lose the scent was the only damned reason he’d allowed the lady to travel with him. If she respected his oddity, he was forced to respect hers. That apparently meant keeping noise away from her so she didn’t go addled and blank, which meant he couldn’t surround her with a troop of guards.
As the hounds started running back and forth across the road, hunting the increasingly elusive trail, Will prayed they were close enough for Lady Aurelia to hear the children.
He had kissed her. He had held heaven in his arms and nearly mauled her last night. His hunger had been so desperate that, had she not conveyed her inexperience in every single action, he would have hauled her off to bed. But for that single moment of glory, he would have willingly died a hundred times over.
He just might die a thousand deaths being this close and not able to have her, Will decided as he listened to her silence. He didn’t court ladies. He bedded willing women. That was the limit of his experience, and he had been happy that way. He meant to marry Miranda once he had the kennel, if only because it made life simple, and he’d have someone to cook for him while he tended his dogs.
Lady Aurelia did not fit those parameters in any manner. And the duke would no doubt kill him if he learned Will had so much as kissed her.
“I don’t hear them,” the lady said plaintively, riding up beside him as they approached the village of Alder. “How does one silence children?”
Will could think of several ways, none of them pleasant enough to mention. “Rose can’t talk and Emma seldom does,” he said instead. “Perhaps they’re busy and happy and playing with dolls.”
“And perhaps the moon is made of green cheese,” she retorted.
Well, so the lady was weird, not stupid. He’d known that. “Alder has no inn,” he told her. “I need to go in the tavern and ask questions. I can’t take you with me. Lady Dare’s retired housekeeper lives just down this lane. I’ll leave you and Pascoe’s groom with her.”
He prayed she had the sense to stay where he left her. Most Malcolm women were inquisitive nuisances who never did as told, but this one had reason to be painfully aware of the world’s dangers. Cursing himself for three sorts of fool for bringing her, he introduced a duke’s daughter to Mrs. Wiggs and left them taking tea in a small cottage where no one would think to look.
When he returned not long after, Lady Aurelia was waiting in the garden, holding a delicious-smelling bundle while the groom led her horse to a mounting block. Her fashionable riding attire belled around a narrow wasp waist. The tight-fitting coat emphasized the swell of her bosom, and the deep blue of the fabric darkened her eyes to mysterious pools. Will was so fascinated, he didn’t reach for the bundle, even though he was starving.
He didn’t help her mount either, not while he was in this state. She shoved the bundle at him until he was forced to take it. He settled on glaring at her for disobeying his orders.
“Did you intend to ride out without me?” he asked as she gained her seat with inbred grace—revealing silken knickers beneath her skirt. He thought he might expire on the spot. If their task wasn’t so urgent, he’d not be able to think of anything else but those lacy pantalets.
“I heard you coming and assumed you learned the same thing I did—that Farmer Thorne’s wagon rolled through the village at dawn, with a stranger at the reins.” She leaned over, opened the linen bundle, and helped herself to a still-warm bun. “I wanted to be ready so I didn’t slow you down.”
That she’d asked the same questions as he had except from a woman’s perspective startled him more than it should have. He’d known she was intelligent. He just never expected women to be logical.
Will took a bun, shoved the bundle into his pocket, and tore off a bite of sweet bread rather than reply. He snapped his fingers at the dogs to make them heel, and wheeled his mount in the direction indicated.
The lady trotted up beside him and handed him an old shirt. “Mrs. Wiggs’ sister takes in mending. This is Farmer Thorne’s.”
“I have the direction,” he muttered ungratefully. Her crestfallen look hit him harder than if she’d used her hand. “But it was a good thought,” he added.
She shot him a baleful look and rode ahead, nibbling on her bun. He’d finished his in two bites. He noted the groom’s pocket bulged with another bundle he wasn’t sharing.
Will wanted—needed—Lady Aurelia to stay safely ensconced with the motherly housekeeper while he and the groom rode out to question the farmer. But the wagon had turned in the direction of Thorne’s place. If there was any chance that the girls had been in that wagon, the lady had to be there to find them. Pascoe’s hounds were trained for guarding, not tracking. He tapped quickly into the one sniffing the road.
Horses. Hunger. Rotting flesh, ummm.
In disgust, Will jerked away again. Smelling dead skunk and thinking ummm was too jarring.
They met Lord Dare and a group of men half way down the lane. Will remembered Emilia’s husband looking pale and weak the last time he’d been this way. Family gossip said he’d been dying until his Malcolm wife discovered the source of his illness. The viscount looked hale and hearty enough now as he reined in his horse.
“Have the children been found?” Dare asked without waiting for introductions.
“We’re tracing a lead to Thorne’s place,” Will said. “Do you know him?”
Dare’s riders inched closer, ostensibly to hear, but Will noted their heads swiveling toward the silent lady doing her best to look stick straight and unapproachable. Given her delectable curves, she failed miserably. They’d all be panting if he didn’t move on.
One of the men spoke up. “Thorne married a widow woman and moved up to town. His son is running the place now, I reckon. He’s a right sort.”
Will desperately wanted to leave the lady with Dare, but watching her grow more tense and stiffer, he realized that hearing just the voices of these few men—and possibly half the village for all he knew—was painful to her. He couldn’t leave her without her permission.
Reluctantly, he turned to her now. “My lady,
I cannot in all good conscience ride up to a stranger’s house with you in tow.” At her look of protest, Will held up his hand. “I know we need you. But would you accept an escort to wait behind, out of sight of the house?”
Dare’s expression lit as he realized who she was, but Will had no intention of introducing a duke’s daughter to this group of strangers. As it was, they were vying to see beneath the hat veil that did little more than entice. Will blessed the viscount’s silence and wished for a stave to beat the rest back.
He could tell she didn’t want an escort. Beneath the veil, her rounded jaw set in determination, and she turned to look in the direction of the groom who had been accompanying them. Surely she could see that the man was jockey-sized, not someone who could stand up to a fight. With a sigh, she nodded. “One more person.”
“Take Mapleton,” Dare suggested. “I’d trust him with my life, and he’s the quiet sort.”
Apparently Dare’s wife had imparted some of Lady Aurelia’s disability to him. For once, Will blessed the Malcolm ladies’ unceasing chatter. When a solid young man rode up and tugged his forelock, Will looked to Lady Aurelia for approval. She set her small chin and nodded once.
With a final exchange of greetings, Dare led his group on toward the abbey.
Will led his growing entourage between hedgerows in the morning chill, until they reached the rutted drive Will had been told to look for. He dismounted and leashed the dogs. “Is there a copse where the lady can be hidden?” he asked Mapleton.
Lady Aurelia rolled up her veil and looked as if she were biting her tongue and would like to bite him as well. She shot him a dagger glare, then tilted her head at her escorts. Will mentally smacked himself for stupidity. She wished to say something but wouldn’t talk about distant voices in front of strangers.
Mapleton nodded. “Just around the bend, sir, there’s a stream behind some willows.”
“Go there and see if it’s safe, take the groom, and if all is well, send him back to lead the lady there.” Will watched the lad and groom ride away, then steeled himself to look at his companion. Seeing her fear, he put a damper on his lust. “What do you hear?”
No Perfect Magic Page 12