by Karen Ranney
A man moved, holding up a lantern, and revealing a face that anyone might consider frightening.
Margaret told herself to be brave as the man reached for her.
Twice Douglas almost went to her, and twice stopped himself. He couldn’t forget the look on Jeanne’s face, and it haunted him.
She hadn’t confessed as he’d expected. Nor had she pleaded with him to understand her actions. Instead, she seemed genuinely shocked, as if Meggie had truly been resurrected from the dead. Nor had she said one word in her own defense. Shouldn’t a guilty woman have tried to convince him of her innocence?
For years he’d wanted something horrible and hideous to happen to Jeanne in order to repay her for her abandonment of her own child. Only to suspect, now, that he had been wrong all this time.
Why had she been sent to the convent? Only one of the questions he needed to have answered. Yet Jeanne had never sought his compassion or elicited his pity.
Do you know that I was once punished for not being a virgin? A comment he suspected she’d not meant to make. I confessed, you see. Perhaps I was feeling rash, but I once told one of the nuns that I had dreamed of you.
His thoughts were beginning to be acutely uncomfortable.
She’d been genuinely caring of Margaret, wanting her to have spectacles, laughing at her comments. She’d been gentle and understanding, amused and tolerant. Even protective. Not the actions of a cruel woman.
Douglas felt as if his world were tumbling around him. He had the distinct and disturbing feeling that everything upon which he based his life in the past ten years was wrong. But if she wasn’t guilty of sending their daughter to her death, why had she never told him what had happened?
I saw her grave.
The third time he made the journey down the hall and stood in front of her room. Placing his hand flat on the surface of the door, he willed her awake. Then, as if he were a conjurer, he heard her muffled sob.
Sadness disturbed him; it was the one emotion for which he was never prepared. People could be talked from rage but there was no defense for sorrow. Besides, what could he say to her to make up for what he’d done?
Turning, he walked back to his room and shut the door, knowing that it would be a sleepless night.
Chapter 30
M oving to the windows, Jeanne pulled back the drapes. Dawn was approaching on the horizon softly and shyly, as a bride might greet her new husband.
She felt estranged from the sight before her, as if she’d never before seen a dawn, as if even the hills of Edinburgh were alien to her. The only home she knew, the only safe and welcoming place, was inside her mind.
Closing her eyes, she felt the hot surge of tears, wondering how long she could cry. But she wept not in grief or anguish but a relief so deep that she felt weak from it. Taking one deep shuddering breath after another, she tried to regain her equilibrium, enough to stare out at the vista before her until it slowly began to make sense.
There, below her, was Princess Street and over there was Queen Street. She could see the corner of the small park in the middle of the square. A carriage was pulling up in front of one of the townhouses, and a wagon trundled noisily through a street farther away. Edinburgh Castle was perched on the hill above them, looking malevolent and regal all at once. To the left were the gardens, where work was finally beginning on the plan Douglas had devised. It would be a wonder of nature created especially for Margaret.
Margaret.
Her heart seemed to stutter.
Releasing her grip on the curtains, she smoothed the wrinkles she’d made with her hand. She turned and crossed the floor, the need to see her daughter instinctive and necessary. She had waited during the long night, but now she wanted to sit and watch as Margaret slept until she knew it was true, that the daughter she’d grieved for all these years was alive.
Slowly she opened the door between the two rooms. The chamber was as it had always been, fit for a princess. But now the princess was her daughter.
But she wasn’t there.
Thinking that she must still be with Betty, Jeanne went to the third floor, tapping on the nurse’s door. Betty answered a few minutes later, attired in her wrapper, a large frilly cap covering her hair. She needn’t rise at dawn like some of the other staff, and Jeanne was quick to apologize for the intrusion.
“Is anything wrong, miss?” Betty asked, peering into the corridor.
“No,” Jeanne answered, realizing that it was suddenly true. Nothing was wrong. For the first time in a very long time nothing was wrong. She began to smile.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, Betty, but I need to see Margaret. Is she still asleep?”
“I don’t know, miss,” Betty said. She stepped aside, revealing a small but tidy chamber. “She went back to her room sometime in the night.”
“She’s not there,” Jeanne said.
That was the only warning she was given that something terrible had happened at Number Twelve Queen’s Place.
A few moments later the two women stood outside Douglas’s chamber, having visited Margaret’s empty room.
“Do you think we should rouse Mr. Douglas, miss? She might be anywhere about the house.”
Jeanne shook her head, trying to tamp down the panic she was beginning to feel. “Go and fetch Lassiter,” she suggested. “Perhaps the two of you can mount a search through the house. Wake the other servants as well. And Stephens,” she added as Betty began to walk quickly down the hall.
Fifteen minutes later, however, Margaret had still not been found.
Lassiter bowed slightly before Jeanne as she stood before Douglas’s chamber.
“If you would like to return to your room, miss, I can notify the master.”
Margaret was her daughter, and she wouldn’t abdicate this responsibility to anyone. As little as she wished to see Douglas right now, someone would have to alert him. Who better but she?
“That’s all right, Lassiter,” she said. “I’ll tell him.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her, but stepped back as she strode forward, rapping on the door with a peremptory knock.
When Douglas came to the door he looked rumpled, cautious, and thoroughly appealing.
“Margaret is missing,” she said as a greeting.
He ran his fingers through his hair and stared at her. “What do you mean, she’s missing?” he asked, frowning.
“She’s not with Betty and she’s not in her room. We’ve searched the house. Where does a child of nine go at dawn?”
He stared out at the servants arrayed behind her. Without a word he turned and left the doorway. She followed him, realizing that she’d never before been in his chamber. The room was the length of the house, and lavish. The furniture was constructed on a large scale, a huge bed dominating the longer wall.
He was standing in front of an armoire on the far side of the room. Reaching in, he pulled out a shirt, donned it, and tucked it into his trousers. At her appearance he looked startled.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked abruptly, the anger she’d tamped down the night before surfacing once again. “When you saw me again, why didn’t you tell me our child was alive?”
He looked at her solemnly for several long moments. “As far as I knew you’d abandoned her. Why didn’t you once mention her?”
“Because I considered myself a murderer,” she said flatly. “Because I never stopped grieving for her. Because I couldn’t bear to remember what had happened. Because I couldn’t bear for you to hate me.”
He only looked at her intently, as if judging the truth of her confession. She wanted to tell him that it would have been easier to lie, but then, there had been too many lies between them.
“Why didn’t you ever come for me?”
There was no way to ask the question without it seeming laden with pathos. She should have withdrawn it, but for the sake of the young girl who’d yearned for him so desperately, she let it remain between them.
Once more he gave her a considering
look, as if debating whether or not to deliver the truth. “At first I hated you,” he said, “for what had happened to Margaret. Later, I thought you were dead.”
She wanted, suddenly, to ask him if he still hated her, but that was not an answer she could bear at the moment.
Turning, she walked back to the door.
“I’ll be with you shortly,” he said.
She nodded, glancing beyond him to where a tapestry hung on the far wall. Douglas was not done with his surprises, it seemed. She remembered the tapestry, recalling when she was a little girl and had been entranced with the scene, a procession winding down from a golden castle on a hill, a princess with black hair with her hand holding the bridle of a unicorn.
“The man I bought it from said it had come from Vallans,” he said.
“I remember it hanging in the hall to the right of the grand staircase. I didn’t know anything had survived.”
“I bought it for Margaret. I wanted her to have something of her heritage.”
All thoughts but one vanished. “Where could she be?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but we’ll find her.”
“She’s a very obedient child,” Jeanne said.
He smiled lightly as he sat on the edge of the bed and donned his shoes. “She has a mind of her own. But I can’t see Margaret leaving her bed before she has to.”
Jeanne knew that well enough. A few times, her charge had been late to the schoolroom, and in the mornings Margaret was often querulous and uncommunicative. It was only after a few hours of being awake that her usual sunny personality surfaced.
She left Douglas to finish dressing. When he joined her they rechecked the public rooms and the rest of the downstairs together but found no sign of Margaret. Douglas conferred with Lassiter some moments later, and when they separated he appeared less sanguine and more concerned.
“What is it?” she asked.
He looked grim, his mouth thinned, his eyes carefully devoid of expression.
She stood in front of him and folded her arms, determined to get an answer. “You can’t withhold information from me. Not now.”
He looked as if he would like to argue with her, but then relented. “One of the downstairs windows is broken,” he said. “It looks as if an intruder has made his way into the house.”
“You think someone has taken her,” she said, the dread she was beginning to feel too familiar.
He didn’t dispute her reasoning. “Yes,” he said shortly.
She had a leaden feeling in the middle of her stomach. Margaret was missing.
“My father,” she said without hesitation.
Douglas looked startled.
“My father,” she repeated.
I want it, Jeanne, and I’ll have it.
She felt as if she might faint, and her legs were suddenly too weak to support her. Reaching out, she grabbed the back of the chair and sat heavily.
“Your father?” Douglas asked, frowning. “Why would you think that?”
“Because he’s ruthless and arrogant, and wouldn’t hesitate to do anything, however vile, to get his own way.”
Releasing the clasp, she held the necklace out to him. “He said he would do anything to get this.”
He took the locket, hefting it in his hand. “It’s heavy, but then it’s gold.”
She nodded. “It was a present from my mother.”
He looked at her and then the necklace. She knew what he was thinking. “It is ugly, isn’t it?”
“What’s inside?”
“I’ve never been able to open it,” she admitted. “I didn’t force it because I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“May I?”
She nodded.
He left the room, Jeanne following. Entering the office, he went to the window and opened the draperies. He dropped the necklace in the center of his desk and sat, looking in the right-hand drawer for something.
A moment later he found it, a small metal implement that had a thumbscrew on the top and looked like calipers. The tines were bent outward and then back into a curve before meeting at the ends.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A tool my sister-in-law Mary uses to extract splinters,” he answered. “I borrowed it one day and never returned it.” He glanced up at her. “I’ve been meaning to, but it always slips my mind. Maybe there was a reason for that.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing something else?” she asked.
“Like what?” he asked, concentrating on inserting the tool between the overlap on the rectangular case.
“Like finding Margaret,” she said.
“I am,” he said and gave her an irritated look. “I want to find out why the Comte du Marchand wanted this locket badly enough to steal my child.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, the ticking of the clock on the mantel adding punctuation to her words. “If he has her, he won’t care what happens to her.”
His hands stilled as he looked at Jeanne.
“Who do you think would have been just as pleased if she’d died taking her first breath? Who do you think told Justine to kill her?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he looked down at the locket. With more force than necessary, he pushed the tool into the case, bending it.
She moved to stand in front of the desk, curious. Slowly the back began to move. Finally the case separated, revealing a folded cloth.
He handed the locket to her. “Do you want to see what it is? After all, it belongs to you.”
The ecru color of the cloth had originally been ivory. She could tell that from the color of the folds as she unwrapped it. Stunned, she stared down at the jewel nestled in her palm.
“What is it?”
She held out her hand for him to see.
“It’s the Somerville ruby,” she said slowly. “I remember my mother showing it to me when I was a child.” The heart-shaped ruby was a deep red shade, the color of blood. As a child she had been fascinated with the stone and the history of it. She would inherit it, just as her mother had, and her mother before her. Generations of Somerville women had guarded the ruby, kept it in trust for their daughters. “I thought it was gone, like everything else at Vallans.” She smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “At least now I know why he wanted the locket.”
“I thought he was wealthy enough on his own.”
“There was never enough money for my father,” she said sardonically. “It was a matter of pride to him. His horses were the best, and his houses were the most lavishly decorated. Everything with which he surrounded himself was the epitome of perfection.”
“Even his daughter?”
She glanced at him and then away, wondering if he’d always been so perceptive. “Yes, even his daughter,” she admitted. “But the last few years can’t have been easy on him, not with the loss of Vallans.”
Handing him the stone, she closed up the locket and fastened it around her neck once more. “The price I paid for it has been too high. I wouldn’t give it to my father and now he’s taken Margaret.”
“I’m a wealthy man on my own, Jeanne,” he countered. “Margaret might have been abducted because of who I am.”
She looked at him, knowing that he said what he did to ease her anxiety. But her fears were part of her now, as much as her breath or her heartbeat. She knew what her father was capable of, and what he’d do to accomplish his aims.
“It was him,” she said, knowing it was true.
He placed the ruby on the top of his desk without saying anything further.
“Then I’ll find him,” Douglas said.
She nodded, moving to stand at the window. He came to her side as she stared at the horizon, now blurred through her tears.
“I’m frightened,” she said, startling herself with the revelation. Not that she admitted to the fear—it had been there from the moment she’d first realized that Margaret was missing—but that she’d actually spoken the words aloud. She’d hidden h
er true emotions for years, and the only honest thing between them of late had been passion.
“So am I,” he said gently, placing his hand on her shoulder.
They stood for a moment, linked by circumstance and emotion, until Jeanne turned.
“What happens now?” she asked, brushing away her tears.
“I’m going to enlist help,” he said. “Edinburgh is a big city, and I’ll need people to help me find Margaret.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” he said. “I need you here.”
“You can’t expect me to simply remain in the house as if nothing’s happened.”
“What if word comes? Someone needs to be here. One of her parents.”
His words had the effect of silencing her. She nodded reluctantly.
Chapter 31
“W hat are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the warehouse,” he said. “I employ over seventy men, and today they’re going to help me look for Margaret.”
She nodded, making no comment.
“Why do people band together and help in the midst of despair, Douglas? Why don’t they identify more with gladness?” The words were spoken so slowly that he wondered what they cost her in effort. “Is it because they feel better about their own lives when someone else is weeping about theirs?” She shook her head.
He led her to the chair beside the fireplace. He’d order a fire built even though it was summer. The warmth would help take the chill off her skin.
“We’ll find her, Jeanne.”
“Yes.”
She sat as proper as a dowager empress, yet too young to have acquired the poise of age. There was something in her eyes that spoke of life experience, a look that sistered her to the women who’d been rescued from France by Hamish and Mary. She appeared lost and haunted, disbelieving his words yet refusing to concede.
She was the strongest person he knew. Her fingers probably trembled but she’d kept them clasped tightly together. A muscle flexed in her cheek as if to keep her lips from quivering. But she’d not been able to hide the look in her eyes. Fear always surfaces in the eyes.