Marblestone Mansion, Book 10

by Marti Talbott

  “I heard men talking,” Beverly whispered.

  “So did I.” Cathleen went back to the small windows, and arrived just in time to watch three men take Leesil into the trees and bushes beyond the backyard. One had hold of her sister’s arm and was practically dragging her. Cathleen caught her breath and covered her mouth to keep from screaming. “They have taken Leesil,” she whispered as she went back and knelt in front of Beverly.

  “Who has taken her?” Beverly asked.

  “Three men.”

  “Prescot dinna stop them?”

  Cathleen touched the nanny’s arm to comfort her. “Stay here. I shall see what has happened and come right back.”

  “Please dinna go. I…”

  “I shall come get you the instant I am certain it is safe. I promise.”

  “Did they take Mr. Prescot?”

  “I dinna see him.” Cathleen tried to gather her courage as she once more went down the spiral staircase. Of the two sisters, Leesil was always the strongest, but now it was up to her. She quietly opened the secret door, stepped out, made certain the door was tightly closed behind her, and then eased down the backstairs to the first floor. She paused to listen for a time, but heard nothing. In winter, all the doors were kept closed to keep the heat in the particular rooms, but in spring, everything was wide open. Cathleen carefully walked down the hallway, passed the empty kitchen, and peeked into the parlor. With no one inside, she started across. Halfway, she spotted Prescot on the floor, gasped and ran to him.

  *

  “Where are you taking me?” Leesil demanded, as Pete led her through the forest to their horses at the waterfall. This time of year, the fullness of the mountain runoff made the abundance of water loudly cascade over the top of the ledge, and fall into the pool below. Had it been any other occasion, Leesil would have admired the first hint of blossoming flowers and budding trees. Instead, she watched as Pete held her wrists together with one hand, pulled a piece of twine off his saddle horn, and then used it to tie her hands. Next, he hoisted her up in his saddle and then climbed on behind her.

  “This is a really stupid idea,” said Earl. “We were going to take the money and hightail it out of town, remember?”

  Pete snickered, “Too late now.”

  Earl had had enough. “You say that one more time and I am going to shoot you.” Finally, he managed to wipe that stupid grin off Pete’s face.

  As he mounted his horse, Willis said, “Let’s just take her far away, turn her lose and let her walk back. That should give her husband enough time to get the money out of the bank.”

  “It is Sunday, remember?” Earl shot back. “Banks do not open on Sunday.” At that, both Pete and Willis were quiet for a change. Earl gently kicked the side of his horse and headed north.

  Pete shrugged, put his arm around Leesil and followed.

  Bringing up the rear, something was making Willis’ horse antsy and when he looked behind him, he smiled. “Hey, that dog is following us.”

  “Throw him the bone,” said Pete.

  Incredulous, Willis asked, “Where was I supposed to get a bone?” When he looked back a second time, Traitor was sitting on the ground watching them go. “We should have stolen some food while we were there. I’m starved.”

  “Because you gave Pete your bread last night,” Earl muttered.

  “Where are you taking me?” Leesil asked again.

  “Shut up,” Pete demanded.

  *

  In Marblestone’s foyer, Cathleen knelt down and gently put her head on Prescot’s chest. His eyes were closed, but his heart was beating and he was still breathing. She ran for the telephone in the parlor and picked up the earpiece. It seemed like forever before the operator answered. “Mable, Prescot has been shot and three men took Leesil! Do you know where Doctor McCormick is?”

  In the small telephone company switchboard, Mable caught her breath. “I will put you right through. If he is not there, someone will…”

  “Can you send someone to fetch my husband? Beverly and I are all alone here now.”

  “Where is he, Mrs. MacGreagor?”

  She looked at the grandfather clock. To her amazement, only forty-five minutes had passed since the last time she looked at it. “They are most likely still in church.”

  “Which church?”

  “The Baptist church on Elm Street.”

  “I will send my son to tell them. Putting you through to the doctor now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cathleen took two deep breaths, and again anxiously glanced around. She couldn’t be certain there was no one else in the house. She looked at Prescot, but he still wasn’t moving. There was a large pool of blood beside him and she was terrified the doctor couldn’t get there in time. Jittery, she heard the phone buzz to signal that the call was ringing, then twice, and a third time before she heard him say, “Doctor…”

  “Prescot has been shot. Can you come straight away?”

  “Where?”

  “At Marblestone. Please hurry. He is bleeding profusely.” Cathleen heard the click of the telephone and then tried to decide what to do next. There was nothing she could do but wait, so she went back to be with Prescot.

  *

  The minister was about to finish his prayer and say Amen, when both doors in the back of the church were yanked wide open. He looked up just in time to see Mable’s son burst in.

  “Mr. MacGreagor, Mr. Prescot has been shot!” the boy yelled. He could not immediately spot Hannish, and spun around twice before the man he was looking for got to his feet. “Robbers, Mr. MacGreagor, and they took Mrs. MacGreagor.”

  “What?” Hannish gasped.

  “Which Mrs. MacGreagor,” Cameron demanded to know as he too stood up.

  “Miss Leesil,” the boy shouted.

  Abigail put her hand on her chest and cried out, Claymore stood up and the boy had to quickly move to get out of Hannish’s way. Somebody yelled, “Call the doctor.”

  “Already called,” the boy shouted. “Mom is trying to get ahold of the sheriff too.”

  “Parson, will you see to the children?” Cameron asked as he quickly made his way to the back of the church.

  “Gladly,” the minister said.

  Blair helped gather the MacGreagor children and then watched as the church started to empty out. Soon, tears were in her eyes and before she realized it, Abigail put an arm around her.

  “I suspect the sheriff will need a few deputies,” said Provost MacGreagor. He was pleased when several of his fellow clansmen nodded as they filed out the door. “You hurt a woman in our clan, you shall have hell to pay,” he muttered to whoever would listen. To his surprise, one of them was Abigail. Jessie had tears in her eyes, and went immediately to try to console Prescot’s wife, Millie, and her children. There wasn’t much she could say and Millie didn’t seem to be able to move out of her seat.

  *

  Outside, Justin hopped in the backseat of his father’s automobile. Soon, Ben and Alistair got in, and Hannish started the engine. His was the first automobile to leave the parking area, and Cameron, with a load of men in his automobile, was right behind him. In a burst of activity, men jumped in their automobiles and carriages, or mounted their horses, and set out in what would soon resemble a stampede through town. Men on horseback soon passed the automobiles and strangers on the streets could do nothing but wonder what was going on.

  *

  Cathleen was still kneeling beside Prescot when she heard the backdoor slam. It startled her so much, that she spun around, and held her breath.

  “Mrs. MacGreagor?” a familiar voice shouted.

  “In the foyer, Mr. Johnston,” she yelled back.

  She lovingly touched Prescot’s cheek. It felt cold and clammy and the color was fading from his face. “Dinna die, Prescot,” Cathleen begged. “Help is comin’.”

  Abigail’s butler ran across the parlor, took one look at Prescot, and then ran up the stairs. “Towels?” he shouted back.

&n
bsp; “In the laundry closet in the first hallway.” Cathleen heard a door upstairs slam shut, and in a flash, the butler ran back down the stairs. She watched as he knelt down, laid a folded towel on the wound and pressed. The pressure made Prescot moan, which made Cathleen finally take a breath. “The doctor is on the way.”

  “Half the town is on the way. Mr. Whitfield called from the church,” The Whitfield butler answered.

  “Good. We shall need half the town to find my sister.”

  *

  Sheriff Jake Abernathy had just returned from Mr. Green’s farm when he got the call from Mable, mounted his horse, and was the first to race up the hill toward Marblestone. After the gold miner’s strike ended and the union lost, there was quite a commotion concerning the former sheriff’s partiality to the union. Therefore, he was dismissed and a new one was sworn in. As the town grew, so did the responsibilities of the Sheriff’s department. No longer did the acting sheriff have to call men and temporarily deputize them when there was trouble. The town authorized two full-time deputies. Unfortunately, they were needed to maintain order during the Easter parade.

  The first to arrive at Marblestone, Jake Abernathy was in his early forties, liked his face clean-shaven and his uniform newly pressed each day. He had a wife and two children he loved, and he was a no-nonsense man, determined to keep the peace. A shooting, robbery and a kidnapping was just the kind of nonsense he wasn’t willing to put up with – not in his town.

  He didn’t mean to startle the Whitfield butler and Cathleen when he yanked the door open and rushed in with his gun drawn. When Cathleen cried out in anguish, he said, “Forgive me.” He shoved the gun in his holster and walked to where Prescot lay dying. “Is he breathing?”

  “Aye.”

  “Have the robbers gone?”

  “I believe so. Three of them took my sister.”

  “Don’t you worry, we shall get her back,” said the sheriff.

  Less than a minute later, she heard a buggy drive up to the house. She got up, went to the door and opened it, just as the doctor made it to the top of the steps. “Where is he?”

  “In there,” she said. She quickly stood aside as he breezed past her, and then she briefly hugged Nurse Julia. “Try to save him if you can.”

  “We will,” Julia assured her.

  “He has lost a lot of blood,” Cathleen heard the Doctor say. “We need to get him upstairs where I can operate.”

  “The blue room is empty,” she told Julia, who not so long ago worked at the mansion. Cathleen watched the nurse hurry up the stairs with the doctor’s bag, and was still holding the front door open, when three men from the church quickly got off their horses and rushed in. At the doctor’s direction, the men carefully carried Prescot up the stairs.

  When Hannish arrived and saw the blood on the floor, it took the sheriff, Ben and two more men to keep him from running out the back, mounting his horse and going after the men who took Leesil.

  “They shot Prescot and they will shoot you if you go after them alone,” said the sheriff.

  There was murder in his eyes. His jaw was tight and so were his fists. “They will be long gone if I dinna,” Hannish argued.

  Ben held tight to his laird’s arm while another man held his other arm. “Let the sheriff do his job. He knows how to find them, we do not.”

  “She is my wife!” Hannish countered. “I cannae stay here and do nothing.”

  “You go running after them,” the sheriff argued, “they will kill her for sure. I have seen it before. With a posse, we can surround them and talk them into giving her back alive.”

  “He is right,” said Ben. “‘We cannae chance causing her more harm.” He was relieved when Hannish relaxed his tight muscles and finally gave in.

  The next thing Cathleen knew, she was in her husband’s arms. She could not hold back the terror she felt another moment, and her words were more like a scream, “They have taken Leesil!”

  “I know, sweetheart. We shall get her back, I promise.” Cameron drew her into his arms once more and let her sob.

  By the time he got there, Dugan was half out of his mind. He raced into the parlor and shouted, “Beverly!” as he started up the marble stairs he heard Cathleen shout, “She is in the hidden room.”

  Dugan turned around, flew across the parlor, ran past the kitchen and hurried up the backstairs. He pushed on the wall and then yelled, “Beverly?”

  “Up here.”

  Taking the stairs two at a time, he found his wife huddled with the two wide awake children, trying desperately to keep them quiet. “Are you hurt?” he asked as he sat beside her.

  Tears were in her eyes when she answered, “They took Leesil!”

  “I know.”

  “I think the baby is coming.”

  Dugan smiled. “Luckily, the doctor is already here.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “They shot Prescot.”

  She closed her eyes and moaned, “Oh no. We heard a shot, but…” Footsteps on the spiral staircase made her jerk her head that direction. She looked just in time to see Ronan and Alistair come up.

  “Thank God you are safe,” said Dugan’s cousin, Ronan, as he took the baby out of her arms. “Come little one. I know a couple of cooks who are going to be mighty glad to see you.”

  “Beverly thinks ‘tis time,” Dugan announced.

  “As I recall,” Alistair said as he picked up little Thomas, “first babies dinna come quickly. There is time yet to settle the place down.”

  “Will Prescot be alright?” Beverly asked as Dugan helped her stand up.

  “He is a fighter, dinna forget,” Alistair reminded her. “He’ll do his best to live.”

  *

  In the corner of the foyer, Justin stood watching all the activity around him. There were men in the house he couldn’t remember ever seeing before. The sheriff had taken Cathleen into the parlor to question her, and Justin never felt so helpless.

  Robbers had taken his mother and there was nothing he could do to help her.

  His father had already started pacing the length of the parlor, rubbing the back of his neck as he always did when he was troubled. Some of the men were helping the Whitfield butler clean the blood off the floor so the women would not see it. Justin had never seen that much blood, not even when he accidentally gave Blair a bloody nose. That was a long time ago. The other men didn’t seem to be bothered by the blood, so he supposed he shouldn’t be either. Still, he didn’t know people had that much blood in them.

  Furthermore, his dog was nowhere to be seen. But then, Traitor never was where he was supposed to be. It was then he spotted the note. It was under some men’s hats on the long thin marble table, and it wasn’t there when they left for church. He remembered, because that is where he picked up his hat just before he ran out the door.

  Weaving his way through the others, he reached under a hat for the note and began to read. His eyes widened, and then he looked around for someone to tell. His father was too upset, so Justin went to where the sheriff was questioning Cathleen, and tugged on his shirtsleeve.

  “What is it boy?” When Justin handed him the note, the sheriff took a moment to read it and then abruptly shouted, “Men, Mrs. MacGreagor is being held for ransom. That means she is likely unharmed. I need volunteers for a search party and we’ve no time to waste.” As soon as Hannish reached him, the sheriff handed the note over.

  “Five thousand dollars?” Hannish muttered. He looked around the room, but Banker Goodwin was not there.

  All the men were eager to volunteer to be part of the posse, but after the sheriff chose fifteen, he said the rest would not be needed until the next day. The men he deputized included Judge Mitchel, Cameron, Ben, two of the MacGreagor footmen, and another ten from the clan and the church. Those without horses went out the back to the corral where Tristin was already saddling the horses he could easily catch.

  *

  It was the oddest thing. When the Whitfield automobile ar
rived, Provost MacGreagor was in the back seat. He had children beside him, children on top of him, and children that looked like they might fall out at any moment. In the front seat, Abigail had two in her lap.

  In Ben’s horse drawn buggy, Blair and Gloria tried desperately to console an upset Millie all the way up the hill. It was no use. Millie hopped out even before Gloria got the horse stopped, and ran through the open front door.

  Alistair was expecting her, and grabbed his old friend around the waist before she could run up the stairs. “Doc and Julia are with him. You cannae go in.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Nay, he is too obstinate to die.” Alistair felt her begin to slump, turned her around, laid Millie’s head against his shoulder and let her cry. The truth be told, he was not as convinced as he pretended to be, but he was determined to put on a brave face for Millie’s sake. He and Millie had come from Scotland with the duchess that first year. They had seen the good and the bad together, and they would face this together as well. Alistair was glad when his wife, Sarah, arrived and took Millie into the parlor to wait.

  “Mark my words, the duchess is behind this somehow,” Abigail loudly said as she came through the door, pulling the fingers of her glove off her right hand.

  “They have taken Leesil for ransom,” Cathleen said.

  “There, you see? Who else would do such a thing but the duchess? If ever I get my hands on her…”

  “My dear, calm yourself,” said Claymore, “the sheriff is talking.” For once, Abigail did as he said.

  In the foyer, the sheriff grabbed his hat off the table. “Mr. MacGreagor, Cathleen said they took your wife toward the waterfall. I will take three men with me and have the others ride in each of the other directions. They might have doubled back.”

  “I’m going with you,” said Hannish.

  “Nay, you stay here and I shall go,” said Cameron. “You must be here when they call to tell you where to take the money.” He watched his brother slump once more, opened the foyer closet door, and reached up on the top shelf for the shotgun. He hid it well, but he could not remember a time when he had been so enraged. Ben and the judge were already out back helping Tristin, so he headed that direction.