“Who’s there?” The wet nurse’s voice rang down the hall. Ethan and Madeleine froze, redundantly signaling each other to be quiet. “Thought I heard something,” Janice Marshall mumbled, returning to her room.
When the nursery door clicked shut, the viscount released his breath. Whispering, he and Madeleine agreed to maintain silence and, as there was only one chair, to take turns watching the hall. He allowed her to serve the first watch, while he lowered himself to the floor with the bed at his back. He continued to imagine Thomas storming the stairs and finding them here. If so, neither one of them would be caught lounging in bed, that was certain.
The time dragged by slowly. Every half hour or so they changed places. By ten o’clock, the house lay silent and still. Anticipating at least several more hours of this before anything happened—if anything happened at all—Ethan felt a surge of gratitude that Madeleine had joined him. He could not live with himself if he fell asleep on duty. Watching her fidget in the darkness was a delightful way to stay awake.
Not long after this observation, Madeleine straightened and waved frantically. He’d not expected activity so early and did not allow himself to hope as he drew close to peer into the hall. But to his unbridled joy, Rose McDaniel was softly entering the corridor, the baby in her arms. She took a long time closing the door behind her. Exchanging a gleeful grin with Madeleine, he waited until the nursemaid passed down the stairs before opening the door wider than a crack.
“Aren’t you going to stop her?” Madeleine whispered.
“Not yet,” he said quietly, hurriedly, his hand on the doorknob. “If I follow, perhaps she’ll lead me to the father of her child, or to someone who will tell us who he is.”
“What if he doesn’t live nearby?”
“I won’t chase her forever, don’t worry.” He stepped into the hall and walked lightly toward the servant’s stair. To his perturbation, he could bear Madeleine’s footfalls close behind, and he turned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you,” she whispered.
“No.” She looked so taken aback that he felt a chuckle rising. He seized her by the arms and kissed her quickly, causing her to look even more startled. “It could be dangerous, my love—”
“Dangerous? Oh, of course—if your accident is connected to the baby in some way.” Her eyebrows turned downward. “Ethan, you shouldn’t go, either! Tell Mr. Brandt to do it!”
His emotions were already on the ceiling, and she only made it worse, causing him amusement at every turn. “I don’t have the heart to convey how little you care about his safety. Now, you must let me go, or she’ll get away.”
He moved forward once more. She trailed after. He sighed. The servant’s stair began to seem as far away as a desert mirage.
“I’m going with you,” she repeated stubbornly, when he stopped again.
“Madeleine. One person may be able to keep hidden, but she would surely notice two.”
“I can stay as hidden as anyone, Ethan,” she hissed. “Do you think I’m clumsy and will make a lot of noise?”
“You are the most graceful creature I’ve ever seen. Now, listen to me. If, for any reason, I’m unable to return before morning, I’m not willing to face your father after keeping his daughter out overnight. Are you?”
At last he had said something to cause her to stop dead in her slippers. When she slowly shook her head, he kissed her a final time, then crouched by the balustrade to listen. As soon as he heard the latch lifting on the back door downstairs, he lifted his fingers in farewell. Madeleine waved back pensively as he moved downward.
Chapter 16
At the junction of the servants’ hall and the kitchen, Ethan paused to peer past the doorway. Cook’s pots were aligned neatly on the brick wall above the stove, and the long, scarred table upon which she prepared breads and vegetables was empty of debris and had been scoured clean; he could smell Cook’s own pungent blend of cleaner. The shelves of the enormous hutch on the far wall drooped with their burden of everyday platters and plates, cups and saucers, the mixture of patterns and colors hardly discernible in the dimness. Of people, the kitchen was empty; Rose McDaniel had gone.
Her deviousness struck him as extraordinary. How innocent she’d looked that afternoon when acting as if taking Dorrie was the very last thing she would think of doing. He recalled their recent conversation concerning the timing of the baby’s arrival; she had speculated about his fictional cousin’s motivations as if she believed there was a cousin. From the day she arrived, every word she’d said to him or any of them had been false. For that reason, he dared not stop her and demand an explanation; she would only lie again.
Quickly, he went to the kitchen door and looked out the diamond-shaped pane of glass in its upper half. The woman had already moved from sight. With his heart pumping in his throat, he swiftly exited. If he’d lost her this soon, his only hope was Scott. He didn’t relish the feeling of depending on someone to do his work for him.
He emerged into darkness and, taking a guess, moved to the right and skirted the corner of the house. Although he could not see her, he continued around front. Unless she intended to swim across the river in back, she must surely plan to use the lane.
When he reached the front of the house, he saw her walking steadily down his drive, brazen as brass, a pelisse covering the thinness of her body, her reticule dangling from her arm, and the baby, snug in her basket, held in front. She suddenly seemed a sinister figure to him, stealing Dorrie away in the night. She had no right to act this way, carrying off her bit of sunshine as if the loss would not matter to anyone. He didn’t care if she was Dorrie’s mother; she had no heart.
He scanned the front and side garden, looking for Scott; but he saw no sign of him. He was probably sleeping beneath some tree. There was no time to search for him and enlist his aid; Ethan would have to follow the woman himself, which was what he preferred to do in any case. He hesitated long enough to see the woman turn right into the lane, then followed.
The night was unusually thick and sticky for spring; not a star twinkled through the layer of clouds blotting the sky, not a sliver of moonlight illuminated his way. But Rose McDaniel struggled through the same darkness burdened with a reticule and a baby, and he had no trouble maintaining his distance, even though he kept to the thickets and shrubs and ditches to remain hidden. His worst difficulty was to stay far enough behind so she didn’t hear him rustling through the undergrowth.
He planned to follow for a space of time. If nothing happened within a couple of hours, if it seemed she meant to travel all night as though she didn’t have an immediate destination, he would stop her. By waiting until she walked some miles from the house, he would at least prove her intent was serious. She could not say she’d merely meant to take Dorrie for a moonlight stroll.
How he hoped she intended to meet her lover somewhere, for then he would obtain Thomas Murrow’s forgiveness—and apologies, too; he believed he deserved that—and the accomplishment of both his dream and Lucan’s. In his mind’s eye, he saw Madeleine’s sweet, pert face melting into happiness. He could almost taste the flavor of her lips, feel her satiny skin, so firm beneath his hands, yet soft, yielding...
When he tripped over a root and fell face down into a hedge of juniper, he bid his brain stop its cruel imaginings and pay attention. Mumbling assorted words he would not care for Madeleine to hear, he momentarily cast aside his need to remain hidden and rolled and clawed his way to the road. Fortunately, the runaway servant did not choose that moment to glance behind her, and, after plucking greenery from his sleeves and rubbing dirt from his jacket, he returned to the underbrush and proceeded forward. The fall had not helped the ache in his leg any, he was sorry to discover.
The going became more difficult after that. He had reached an area of cultivated fields, and the cover of wild underbrush and trees at the edges of the road diminished to small clumps spaced at unhelpful intervals. Ethan allowed Mrs. McDaniel to gain a greater lead, then crouched a
s he ran from one island of vegetation to the other. Increasingly, there was nothing to hide him at all, and he felt grateful for the woman’s determined pace. Had she decided to look around for a place to rest, were she of a more fearful frame of mind and inclined to keep alert for possible assailants or followers, he would be found.
He had been walking for a little more than an hour when the first raindrops began to fall. After a few seconds of accumulating wetness, Mrs. McDaniel stopped. Ethan froze; there was not so much as a tall blade of grass to hide behind, and he slowly, painfully eased downward, making himself as small an object as possible. He needn’t have bothered. The woman tended to the baby in some way, probably trying to protect Dorrie from the mist, then set off at a more rapid pace without looking in any direction except the path before her.
She certainly gave the impression of having a destination in mind, Ethan thought, trying to keep hope alive. If not, surely she would seek shelter from the rain; the possibilities were growing for such hideaways. They were drawing nearer to the village of Brillham, and several cottages lined the way, some of them possessing small barns. She had almost reached the largest of them, Cotter’s Cottage, which was something of a local curiosity.
Brushing damp hair from his eyes, he recalled the legend as he walked. Henry Cotter and his family had dwelled in the home he built for something like twenty years, farming the land and making a better living than most. One morning, a hired laborer arrived for work to find the entire family missing—husband, wife, and three grown children—as well as the livestock and much of the furnishings inside the house. No one ever discovered what had become of them.
In the decades since their disappearance, not a person had claimed the cottage or dared live in it. The building’s inevitable deterioration had been slower than what might be expected, and Ethan remembered many gleeful, childhood excursions exploring its small rooms and strangely deep cabinets, racing up dusty, steep stairs to a loft in which no spiderwebs had laced into corners, no small animals nested in the rafters. All the children expected to find apparitions at any moment, or at least a pile of bones, although Lucan and Scott pretended to be too sophisticated for such beliefs. For himself, he remembered taking particular joy in frightening Alice by feigning trances and jumping out at her when she least expected it. As for George, he could never be persuaded to enter the cottage at all.
The recollection was enough to make him smile despite the miserable, wet darkness. How he wished Mrs. McDaniel would turn her steps toward that unlucky cottage; although, as a stranger she might not be aware that it remained uninhabited. He watched tensely as she drew abreast of the abode, then passed it by.
Sharply disappointed, he decided he could not endure much more of this. Madeleine would be worried. Moreover, the further he walked from his stable, the less likely he would be able to apprehend the servant should she rendezvous with someone having transportation. The thought chilled him. Quickening his steps, he closed the distance between them.
Through the increasing patter of rain, he heard a sound to his left. He swerved, thinking perhaps someone followed him. Instants later, a shadowed flurry of wings broke skyward; an owl clutching a small, writhing form.
He returned his attention to the road ahead. Mrs. McDaniel had disappeared.
* * *
Two windows, both smeared with raindrops, flanked either side of the bed in Madeleine’s chamber, and she had long ago pulled a chair beside the left one. Her view encompassed only a portion of overgrown garden at the side of the house, then the field beyond. She considered going to one of the front receiving rooms as she had done immediately after Ethan set out, but should someone find her mooning about the windows there, she’d face unwanted questions.
She was so tired of waiting. Ethan had been gone almost two hours. He had mentioned the possibility of staying away all night. She felt tempted to don her nightgown and go to bed, but sleep would not come if she did. She thought it best to remain dressed in case something happened. Surely something would happen soon.
She clenched and unclenched her fists to relieve the tension, wishing she’d accompanied Ethan no matter what he had said. It would not be dangerous, following a fallen woman; only sad. She could have stayed hidden as well as he. Why did men think only they deserved adventures? Staying at home and waiting was far more difficult. If Ethan expected to command her to do distasteful things like this after they were married, she needed to clarify his thinking.
At least they could be wed with Papa’s blessing now, she thought for the hundredth time. She could hardly wait to see his expression when they told him. He would be happy for her, she knew, once he understood Ethan was not the rake, or not quite as wicked a rake as he feared. And her mother! Madeleine smiled, anticipating her joy. She could barely restrain herself from running to her bedroom and waking her.
Oh, if only Ethan would hurry!
A movement caught the corner of her eye, and she rose and stepped closer to the window. She saw a flash of white, then made out the figure of a man. For an instant she thought it might be Ethan, but it was only Scott Brandt. The viscount had ordered him to patrol the grounds, she recalled. Perhaps he knew something. At least she could talk to him instead of sitting here like a lump, and a little rain wouldn’t melt her. She went to the wardrobe to search for her hooded cape.
* * *
It was as though Mrs. McDaniel had vanished into the mist. His heart dropping to his boots, Ethan raced forward. An unpaved trail branched off the main road a short distance beyond Cotter’s Cottage; if the maid hadn’t taken it, he didn’t know where she could have gone. A vestige of superstition spiced his fears as he ran.
When he reached the turning and saw her treading resolutely through the grass and mud ahead, he breathed deeply in relief. She had narrowed her choice of destinations considerably by taking this trail. He knew of only a few possibilities of shelter back here: three one-room cottages—little more than huts, actually—all of them built by Cotter for his laborers. These, too, were abandoned and seemed ideal for hiding inside now that he thought about it, although how Rose McDaniel came to know of them after dwelling here for so short a time puzzled him. She passed by the first hut, her pace quickening. A short distance later, Ethan saw the reason for her hurry. A lamp shone in the window of the second cottage, and in the thicket beside it stood a horse tethered to a tree. Ethan proceeded more cautiously now, his hopes flying. But when Mrs. McDaniel entered the hut, placed the basket on the table, and handed the baby to her companion, who lifted Dorrie in a warm embrace, the three of them framed by the window like actors on a stage, his jaw tightened in shock and crushing dismay.
* * *
By the time Madeleine exited from the kitchen door and walked to the side of the house beneath her window, Mr. Brandt was no longer there. Knowing he must be nearby, she circled the house and found him striding toward the stable. She broke into a trot until she drew close enough to call his name softly. Hearing her, he pivoted with a look of surprise.
“Have you seen Ethan?” she asked without preamble, although she noted he appeared more disheveled than she had ever seen him. The rain had flattened his hair to dripping strands, and his countenance in the dim light seemed disconsolate and troubled. She felt a sudden stab of concern for him.
“No,” he answered. “What are you doing outside in this downpour, Miss Murrow?” Before she could answer, the significance of her question appeared to strike him. “Has Ethan gone?”
“You don’t know, then. Mrs. McDaniel went away with the baby.”
“Then she is the mother,” he said, and the gladness on his face renewed her own delight. Of course, he was not concerned for their happiness but the estate’s well-being; nevertheless, her smile grew wider.
“Yes, and Ethan followed her, thinking she might be on her way to meet someone, maybe even Dorrie’s father.”
“I suppose that’s possible. She had time to dispatch a message this afternoon.” He moved as if to take her hand
s in his excitement, then, recollecting himself, drew back. A tense, faraway light came into his eyes. “There’s no chance she could be ...” He seemed to become aware again of Madeleine’s presence. “No, of course not.”
“What?” she asked anxiously. “What worries you, Scott?” She said his given name without thinking, and apparently he didn’t notice or mind.
He hesitated, then said, “It couldn’t be that she isn’t the mother but intends to kidnap the child for ransom.”
“Oh!” Her spirits plummeted. “Surely not!”
Looking contrite, he said, “Don’t worry, Miss; please. I’m always thinking the worst thing. Everyone says so, especially Ethan. My imagination is ridiculous.” But his worry was increasing, she saw it in his eyes.
Madeleine recalled how caring the nursemaid seemed with Dorrie, how protective. “She never struck me as the kind of woman who would do such a thing.”
“No, naturally not.”
But she was the kind of woman they wanted to believe could give birth out of wedlock, abandon her baby, and pretend she wasn’t the mother. They stared at one another, the unspoken thought shimmering between them.
Madeleine spoke first. “If it is a kidnapping attempt, Ethan could be in danger.”
Scott rubbed a hand across his chin. “How long has he been gone?”
“Two hours,” she said in a voice of dread, thinking she should have sought Scott before this.
“Did you happen to see which direction he took?”
“I watched him from the window; he turned right at the lane.”
“I don’t know how I missed seeing them leave the house, although I was in the stable for a few moments ...”
There was no time for his guilt. “Scott, shouldn’t we search for him?”
“Yes. That is, I will. You’d best go inside where it’s dry.”
She glared at him. Every man in the world was the same, it seemed. “I will not; I’m coming with you.”
The Bridegroom and the Baby Page 20