The Vanishing of Lord Vale

by Chasity Bowlin

  Middlethorp pulled her back. “Sarah! Sarah! You must calm yourself!”

  “I will not calm myself! That is the man who took my child from me… he pulled him right from my arms and ordered his henchman to leave me gagged and bound to the foot of my own bed,” she whispered brokenly. “I know his face, Branson! I see it every night in memories that are far more cruel than a nightmare ever could be!”

  He stared at her for a long moment, and then opened his mouth as if to placate her.

  “I saw him, Branson!” Lady Vale snapped. “I know you think me mad, but I am not. He is the man who ripped my sweet Benedict from my arms all those years ago. I am unlikely to forget his face!”

  Middlethorp sighed. “Sarah, we’ve had this discussion in the past. I know you want to find out what happened to your son, but you have been chasing ghosts for so many years that you see them even when they are not present!”

  “Do not insult my intelligence! I am perfectly well aware of what others think of me,” she snapped. “I’ve seen their pitying looks, the very same looks I’ve seen from you. I’ve heard their whispers as I walk past. Mad Lady Vale. Poor dear, Lady Vale. Such a tragic woman—did you hear her husband died in his lover’s arms?”

  Branson held up his hands in supplication. “I do not mean to offend, Sarah, and I do not in any way mean to belittle what has happened to you. I only want you to consider the possibility that your desire to find those responsible could be coloring your vision. Just consider it.”

  Benedict turned to Middlethorp. “Lady Vale is right. I cannot account for it in any other way. When this man laid eyes on her, I saw recognition in his gaze. Whatever strange set of circumstances have brought them into this space together, she is speaking the truth.”

  Middlethorp arched one eyebrow in response. “And would this have anything to do with it furthering your own cause?”

  “If by cause you mean the safe return of my sister and Elizabeth—Miss Masters, then yes. That is my only cause!” Benedict snapped.

  Middlethorp nodded. “Fine then. Let us get back to it. Did you abduct Lady Vale’s son?” he demanded of Hardwick.

  “I did. Maybe I recall it because it’s the last thing in my life I did that I felt regret for… after that, didn’t seem like anything else mattered. I’d already damned myself.” Hardwick stared down at the counterpane, not meeting Lady Vale’s gaze. “I never wanted to do it. But we needed something to make Lord Vale do what was asked of him. We never thought he’d say no.”

  Middlethorp launched himself at the man, grasped him by the throat. “Explain yourself!”

  “Lord Vale knew we had the boy… we sent word to him that we had him. Told him we’d kill his son if he didn’t give up the book back to its rightful owner. He sent word back to go ahead. Said he’d get himself a new wife and a new brat,” Hardwick said. “I couldn’t kill the child. He was just a boy. I’ve done a lot of things in my life to be ashamed of but I didn’t do that.”

  Benedict felt his knees growing weak. He sank onto the nearest chair. “What did you do with this boy?”

  Hardwick was teary-eyed when he confessed, “I gave him to a couple. The man was a drunk. The woman was hard, I suppose, but her man said it was because she’d lost too many children and couldn’t have any more of her own. So, they paid me a shilling to take the boy and raise him as their own!”

  Benedict couldn’t ask any more questions. He couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat. Lady Vale collapsed onto the floor, sobbing with a mixture of relief and hysteria. It was Middlethorp who continued the interrogation, who dug for the truth from a man none of them could trust. “And their names?”

  “Didn’t have one, as far as I know. The man was a stone mason… first name was Jasper,” he said. “That’s all I know. They took the boy and headed north and I never seen or heard from ’em again.”

  “Where are Miss Masters and Mr. Mason’s sister?” Middlethorp continued. He was relentless, leaning over the man, the threat of more violence ever present in his menacing stance.

  Hardwick grew suddenly taciturn, looking away and refusing to answer. Middlethorp pulled a small pistol, the kind ladies typically kept in their reticules, from inside his coat. He grasped the wrist of Hardwick’s good arm and placed the barrel of the gun directly against his hand. “I can ruin you right now. If you go back to your employer with one ruined arm and a hand you can’t even move then you’re as good as dead.”

  The wounded man struggled, but it was to no avail. Middlethorp’s hold on him was unbreakable. “You’re as bad as he is, you bastard!” Hardwick shouted. “The lot of you using your money and your power to bring others to heel!”

  At the end of his patience, Middlethorp said, “Talk. Tell us what we need to know and, much as it pains me, I’ll do what I can to see you get transported rather than hanged.”

  Hardwick turned his suspicious gaze up to Middlethorp’s face. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because, right now, it’s more important to find Mary and Elizabeth than to worry about what becomes of you,” Benedict answered for the man who was most likely his uncle. “Why did you target Miss Masters for abduction?”

  Hardwick’s confession was spat out bitterly. “I was hired to take her. So I did.”

  “And Mary?” he demanded.

  “Don’t know her.”

  Fury washed through him, but Benedict tamped it down, forced it back as he’d done all those years during the brutality of his childhood. He needed to focus and to use his head, not his fists. “You took her from the street in front of Madame Zula’s just over a week ago. Tell me why and tell me where to find her!”

  The man screamed in pain. “I don’t know… I don’t know where he takes them! It’s the truth!”

  Benedict ran his hands through his hair in frustration. They were talking in circles and the more time that was wasted with it, the farther away Elizabeth became. “Who? Where who takes them?”

  The man looked up at him with pure hatred burning in his gaze. “He’s a gentleman, but we don’t know his name. It’s always dark. If we’re taken to him then we have to wear hoods to and from.”

  “You’ve been to his home? Seen the inside of it, then?” Middlethorp interjected.

  “Yes,” the man agreed, but offered nothing further.

  Benedict eyed him coldly. “We’ve shown you that we’re not above causing you a great deal of discomfort to get answers. But time is of the essence. He may agree to having you transported, but if I don’t find those two women, it won’t be the hangman who sees you dead. Understand?”

  Hardwick nodded. “I’ll tell you what I can, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to save them.”

  “For your sake, it had better be,” Benedict answered evenly.

  Hardwick dropped his head to his chest but his voice was clear. “I’ve seen inside it. It’s fancier than this house, bigger. Out in the countryside, but no more than a couple hours from the city,” the man said.

  Middlethorp muttered an oath under his breath. “How far did you travel to get to this man’s estate?” he demanded of Fenton.

  “It’s about an hour… maybe more. Assuming they didn’t drive us in circles,” he answered.

  “And this Madame Zula? What is her role in this?” Middlethorp queried. His tone was brusque and it was becoming more clear with each passing moment that he was at the end of his patience.

  “She helped find the girls we were to take. Sometimes they’d ask for specific types of girls and we’d hire people to talk about Madame Zula in front of them, knowing most would be intrigued enough to visit her.”

  Benedict glanced at him. “Who asked for a girl like my sister… and for Miss Masters?”

  Fenton clammed up then, refusing to say more. Benedict rose and moved toward the bed, ready to inflict any pain necessary to make the man speak, but Lady Vale stepped forward instead.

  “I can only imagine that as unscrupulous as your employer is, you continue to work for him for
more than simply financial gain. You fear him, don’t you?” She posed the question softly, speaking conversationally to him as if he hadn’t ruined her life, the life of her child and two young women that were connections of hers.

  “We’re all afraid of him,” Fenton replied. “Everyone who works for him does so because they don’t have a choice. He doesn’t give you one. If you were smart, you’d be afraid of him, too!”

  “We are, Mr. Hardwick,” Lady Vale stated. “We just won’t continue to live in fear. Please, tell us what we need to know to stop him. If you do, it frees us all!”

  “It might free you… the only place I’m going is to the gallows!” Fenton barked at her.

  If Benedict had thought her a forgiving sort, if he’d imagined in any way that she might be inclined to soften her heart toward the man in light of his fear, her next words disabused him of that notion.

  “Mr. Fenton, if those young women die, or worse, remain lost for decades as my son did, you are going to the gallows regardless.” Lady Vale’s tone was firm and her expression completely unmoved. “Saving your life will not be an option, but cleansing your soul still is. Tell us what we need to locate Mary and Miss Masters. Help us to stop him from taking any more young women away from their families!”

  Hardwick’s gaze snapped to her, shocked but grudgingly respectful. “I don’t have a soul to save. Not anymore.”

  “Are you a betting man, Mr. Hardwick? If so, I’d hedge my bets if I were you,” Middlethorp interjected.

  “Fine,” Fenton agreed. “I’ll tell you all I know, on one condition.”

  “And what condition is that?” Benedict queried, knowing the man would make a play to save his own skin.

  Hardwick met his gaze squarely, unflinchingly. “You offered up transportation. I can’t help where those girls are now and what’s happening to ’em. But I’m doing everything you ask to help you save them right now. I don’t go to the gallows. Have me transported like you offered. I’ll go wherever I’m sent, and never darken English soil again… but I don’t want to hang. It’s not a fit way to die.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Middlethorp conceded, adding the caveat, “but if those girls are dead, it will not be up to me. But you have my word to assist as much as possible. And if it comes to it, I’ll find a better way for you than hanging from someone else’s rope.”

  They both knew what that meant. Dying by one’s own hand might have scared some, but only those who hadn’t watched people dangle at the end of a rope as they struggled and gasped. Suicide wasn’t pretty, but it was a better option. “Fair enough,” Hardwick accepted. “When we were to go to his estate, we had to set out on the London Road and were to wait at the crossing there where the road heads off to Brighton. A black coach, no markings on it, would arrive. We’d all be given hoods to put on and driven to the estate. I can’t swear to it, but I believe we headed west. It’s a big estate, grand… lots of gilded furniture inside and marble floors covered in rugs worth more than I’d ever see in my life.”

  Middlethorp frowned. “There are only two men I know of who have ‘grand’ estates in that direction. One, I frankly can’t conceive of him being involved in any scheme such as this… the other—”

  Lady Vale made a sound of distress. “It’s Harrelson, isn’t it? All of this misery, from the taking of Benedict to the abductions of these poor young women can be traced back to my late husband, can’t it?”

  Middlethorp looked even more grim, if possible. “So it would appear, Sarah. I wish it were not so.”

  Lady Vale looked at him. “You could not have prevented it. James was a law unto himself… he followed no one’s rules but his own. But are you satisfied now that Mr. Mason is, in fact, my son?”

  “I am not dissuaded against it,” Middlethorp granted. “That is all I can offer until we have this settled. We need your investigator… Adler?”

  “He’s been sent for,” Benedict answered. “He should arrive shortly… we still need answers about who targeted Miss Masters and Mary.”

  “What does she look like, this Mary?” Hardwick asked.

  Benedict sighed as he relayed the information. “Very petite, blond hair. It would have been just over a week ago that she was taken.”

  “I can’t say who asked for her,” Fenton answered. “But for her, we just nabbed the one what fit the description we’d been given. They wanted a small, blond woman… one who wasn’t a child but could pass for one. I don’t ask why. Better not to know with some, I think.” He paused, then drew a deep breath and continued. “With Miss Masters, it was different. We were given specific instructions to take her and only her. That was why we hired those women to talk about Madame Zula at the baths, so they’d be overheard by Miss Masters and Lady Vale. I never made the connection who she was… not till later. It’s been a long time. So I didn’t think those biddies talking about a mystic would appeal to a woman of her age… it’s usually younger women, single, desperate for love and romance that want to be told their fortunes. We were to take them to that same crossroads and hand them over to others. Sometimes it was the Irishman what worked for Madame Zula, and sometimes it was another man who was always with my employer. But we never knew who it would be.”

  “Someone wanted her specifically? You’re certain?” Middlethorp asked.

  “Yes. We were told in no uncertain terms that it had to be her. No substitutions would be accepted,” Fenton answered. “I don’t know what enemies that young woman could have made in her life but, whoever they are, they’re quite determined to see her pay for whatever it was they think she’s done.”

  Benedict turned his attention from Fenton to Middlethorp. The man knew something but he wasn’t sharing it in front of Lady Vale. He knew Elizabeth had secrets and he knew that one of them was her former lover. There was a scandal there, and while it was unlikely that such a thing would be the root of all this, it was also the only straw left for him to grasp at.

  “You said you didn’t make the connection until later,” Middlethorp countered. “What happened when you did?”

  “I told my employer. He still wants the book… the one we were after all those years ago. I don’t know what’s in it, but he means to have it. You’re still not safe from him. Not now. Not ever,” Fenton answered.

  Middlethorp frowned. “We need to see Madame Zula,” he said, addressing Benedict. “I have a feeling that I know who is seeking Miss Masters. There was a scandal in her past, but it was something that I elected to overlook when hiring her. Her appearance was so far removed from the wild tale I’d heard that I assumed it had been greatly exaggerated or perhaps distorted to make the man involved appear less the villain for it.”

  Lady Vale gasped. “You hired her as my companion knowing this?”

  “I know she has a past,” Benedict said. “I only have a care for it because it might lead us to her now. It changes nothing of my feelings or my intentions toward her, regardless. Heaven knows I’m not without sin myself.”

  Middlethorp nodded. “Madame Zula first. Then we head on to Harrelson’s and beard the lion in his den.”

  Benedict nodded his agreement. “Do you think she can be of use to us?”

  “I think she can confirm for us where the women are taken to… at this point, we can’t be certain they are on his estate. Without confirmation, approaching him may very well sign their death warrants.”

  Benedict knew that was the truth of it, but the delay worried him more. The sense of urgency was riding him hard and he felt that every second not in pursuit was wasted, whatever the wisdom behind it.

  “There’s still time,” Hardwick said. “We weren’t supposed to make the trade until tomorrow night. They’ll hold her somewhere in town till then. Won’t move her again till it’s dark out.”

  “And can your companions be trusted not to harm her in the meantime?” Benedict snapped.

  Hardwick looked away. “We don’t get paid if we don’t deliver them in one piece. I’d hope that was enough to keep
her safe, but I can’t make promises.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fear consumed her. Elizabeth had remained silent, curled on the floor of the wagon and feigning unconsciousness as they traversed the city in the darkness. But the first light of dawn was beginning to break, filtering through the fog and settling a soft glow over the city. The wagon had finally stopped.

  She could smell the river. But as she couldn’t hear the rushing water of the weir, she knew they were far removed from the more fashionable areas of the city.

  A pair of strong but none too clean arms grasped her and she screamed. The hand that clamped down over her mouth and nose was just as foul smelling as the rest of him. But the lack of air made her panic and she pushed at him.

  “Stop strugglin’ and keep quiet. You ken?”

  The menacing whisper against her ear prompted a jerky nod from her. Abruptly, the hand fell away and she was all but dragged from the back of the wagon. Stumbling on the uneven ground in her slippers, she was half-running as she tried to keep up with the man’s longer stride. They were in an area of the city she’d never seen, filled with shabby-looking buildings and warehouses.

  She had no notion of whether they were north or south of the Circus.

  “You try to get away, you make me chase you,” the man said again, his voice just as menacing before, “and I’ll make you pay for it. I don’t much care whether we get any money for you or not. You understand me, girl? Some things are worth more to a man than gold… I’ve never had me a lady before.”

  He leaned in and sniffed her hair, making a sound that made Elizabeth’s skin crawl. “I doubt very seriously your employer would only withhold payment. He is apparently a very ruthless man and would not take well to being crossed.”

  “I don’t take well to it neither,” he said and shoved her toward the building nearest them.

  Elizabeth listened to every sound. Just as they were about to enter, she heard the pealing of bells from the Abbey marking the hour. The sound was north of her and helped her to get her bearings. If she could escape, she at least knew in which direction to travel.