Captive Surrender

by King, Rebecca

  “What do you want to do about them now, boss?” Humphrey asked when Levant showed no inclination to stop grumbling about female stubbornness.

  “I think that it is time to increase the heat on the ladies a little, don’t you?”

  “Do you want me to pay them a call?” Humphries small round eyes lit with enthusiasm that was immediately quashed with Ludwig’s loud sigh.

  “Of course I don’t want you to pay them a call,” Levant snarled. “What do you plan to do, rough them up a little? We would have every magistrate within a hundred miles banging on the door, you idiot,” Levant snarled. “No, leave this one to me. I am going to get that woman to sell me that house, and the blasted grounds, or my name is not Ludwig Levant.”

  Stephen snorted and shook his head. He knew that Ludwig Levant wasn’t the man’s real name, although why Charles Rochester Kempton would want to willingly change his identity to such a ridiculous name as Ludwig, heaven only knew. Stephen glanced at bumbling Humphrey and, not for the first time, wondered if the man had all of his marbles in one place. Although he was good with his fists; he had hands the size of dinner plates, he only seemed able to operate under direct, clear and precise instruction. He was hardly the kind of man the French would want to enlist to their cause, and that was the reason why Stephen was there.

  Several months earlier, he had been tasked with finding out if there was any link between the mysterious Charles Kempton, aka Ludwig Levant, who had suddenly started to purchase a lot of properties while having very little in the way of funds, and a group of French spies, whose string of safe houses the Star Elite had recently destroyed.

  The Star Elite were still trying to locate five missing Frenchmen; Rousseau, Guerin, Laurent, Dubois and Fournier, and suspicion had fallen on Charles Kempton, aka Ludwig Levant, largely because he had appeared out of nowhere, changed his name, and the properties he had purchased were all in a meandering line that stretched all the way from Mayfair in London to Cornwall. Although the French spies had yet to be found, Stephen suspected that they were not very far away. Were they using the houses Ludwig had purchased as safe houses? If not, why would someone like Levant want so much property? More importantly, who was his financier, because it certainly wasn’t his money he was spending.

  Unfortunately, it appeared that Levant had now set his sights on Cragdale Manor. Was that because it had a rather conveniently placed private beach that would be perfect for the spies to use to get out of the country? Or was Ludwig nothing more than a bully and a greedy, unscrupulous landowner who wouldn’t be satisfied until he owned half the county? Somehow, Stephen couldn’t see that Levant had the intelligence required to be involved in a clever operation the likes of which the French had established on English soil, but he knew from past experience that he would be foolish to discount Levant’s involvement just yet, especially give the his determination to buy Cragdale. The fact that Levant had just offered for the beach, without the house, seemed to confirm to Stephen that his suspicions were correct: Levant was involved with the French in some way, he just didn’t know how yet.

  He sighed and settled back into his saddle and thought about his colleagues. Where the rest of the Star Elite were now, heaven only knew. The last time he had seen his boss, Sir Hugo, and Simon Ambrose, they had all been at Jamie Montford’s wedding. Pie’s wedding to the beautiful Florence had rapidly followed before everyone had departed on their new missions. He knew that Pie had retired due to his injuries, and Jamie had decided to quit to enjoy his family, and live the life of a country gent. Archie was already on his way to welcoming his second child with his wife, Portia, while Simon and Francesca had their third offspring on the way. Heaven only knew how many children Hugo and Harriett had now.

  While Stephen had no intention of admitting it to anyone, he rather envied his happily married colleagues. His life with the Star Elite brought him many long and often arduous hours in dangerous locations that had, on more than one occasion, put his life at considerable risk. The thought of having nothing more taxing to do with his time than race the weather in order to dig his winter vegetables rather appealed to him.

  He couldn’t help it: he simply had to turn around and take one last, lingering look at the now sodden bundle of femininity who had captured his interest so fervently. He shook his head, and turned to face forward only for his attention to be caught by the dark glare Levant gave him.

  “Seen something interesting?” Levant demanded snidely.

  Stephen stared his boss down, completely unperturbed by the menace evident on the man’s dark face. “It appears that she is rather ignorant of the weather too,” he drawled and nodded to the house behind them. He saw Levant flicker a dismissive glance at Prudence before he turned to study Stephen far too intently. “Seems to me that the lady is adamant that she isn’t going to sell,” Stephen drawled.

  “She will sell,” Levant growled. There was a hint of frustration in the man’s voice that warned Stephen that the worst was yet to come. “I am going to have the beach, and that woman, or my name is not Ludwig Levant.”

  Over my dead body, Stephen mused, aware of the flurry of protectiveness that swept through him at the thought of Levant ever getting close enough to Prudence, or her sisters, to be able to touch her.

  “Seems a lot of hassle to go to though, just for a beach,” Stephen drawled around a yawn. His posture remained relaxed and at ease, yet everything within him reverberated with a tension that refused to subside. He ignored Levant’s disparaging snort and didn’t have to wait long before he got a reply.

  “It isn’t just a beach. It is far more than that,” Levant snapped impatiently.

  Stephen lifted a querying brow and sighed when Levant made no attempt to expand on his comment. Determined not to be thwarted, Stephen turned a dark glare on the man beside him. “It is sand, pebbles and sea. There are a lot of beaches like that up and down the coastline. Why that beach? Why not the one next door?”

  “Because this one is the closest to Dinnington, and it is away from the nosy parkers in Marchwell. It has everything we need.” Levant seemed to realise he had said far too much and closed his mouth with a snap. He nudged his horse into a trot and left silence to descend over the riders as they made their way out of the storm.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It’s alright, mother,” Prudence sighed. “Everything is going to be alright. Just come with me,” she murmured softly as she turned her mother around and led her back toward the house.

  “But they have gone, you know, they have gone,” Agatha replied with a frown. Her small frame trembled beneath the thin material of her white nightdress. It was cold outside, but Agatha had not bothered to put a shawl on before she had left the house to wander aimlessly around the gardens.

  Prudence shouldn’t be surprised, really. It wasn’t the first time that she had found her mother wandering around the house and grounds late at night, or early in the morning. Usually, either she or her sisters made sure that the doors were kept locked and bolted, but everyone must have forgotten to slide the bolts across last night. How long Agatha had been wandering around the gardens Prudence had no idea but, from the sight of her mother’s muddy, and slightly blue feet, she had been outside for some time.

  “I know that they have gone, dearest, but we can find them in the morning. Right now, it is too dark to see anything,” Prudence muttered and shared a frustrated glance with Maggie, who appeared in the sitting room doorway. “Go and fetch a bowl and some water, we need to get her clean,” she sighed and eyed the muddy footprints they had left on the tiled floor behind them.

  She turned to Robbie. “Go and fetch a stool.”

  Within minutes, Robbie was holding his mother’s hand and talking nonsensically to her while Prudence and Maggie quickly washed the mud off their mother’s feet.

  “We can’t carry on like this indefinitely,” Maggie warned. Her chin wobbled at the mumbled nonsense that their mother repeated over and over.

  Several years ago t
heir father had abandoned them in favour of a dissolute lifestyle in London. He had taken with him what had been left of the family coffers and spent the lot before his death. Unable to cope with the scandal and shame, their mother’s health had declined at a steady rate every day since, and she had descended into a state of madness that now posed a significant risk to her life. Unfortunately, in order to protect themselves and their home, Prudence and her siblings had been left with no option but to fend for themselves and care for their increasingly frail mother.

  “We have no choice,” Prudence snapped as she pushed to her feet. “We will lose the house if Uncle Bernard ever gets wind that she is like this. She will be confined to heaven only knows where, and then what?” She stopped as she realised her voice was getting louder and louder, and immediately regretted her outburst. Nobody argued with her though, because they knew she was right.

  Uncle Bernard, embarrassed by his younger brother’s abandonment of his family, had offered Agatha a monthly stipend in return for her continued silence on the matter so as not to bring the family name into disrepute. Agatha, having been of sound mind at the time, and with a family of six mouths to now feed and raise alone, had accepted the rather meagre monthly allowance. Unfortunately, in doing so, she had unwittingly forced the girls to do whatever they could to help ease their troubled way through life. Prudence was fairly certain that Bernard’s rather questionable generosity would not extend to Agatha’s children if they ended up motherless too. If he ever discovered that their mother was not of sound mind, he would undoubtedly want her cast into the mad house and, as a result, would take possession of the property and estates, which would render Prudence and her siblings destitute and homeless, if not pushed into unwanted marriages.

  “We agreed to continue to care for her for as long as we have to. We need the allowance,” Eloisa argued softly.

  “But we can barely survive as it is,” Maggie protested. She placed her hands on her hips in a stance of defiance that wasn’t lost on any of the sisters, or Robbie. “We are having to do more and more just to keep this house running, and that is before we even start to look at the repairs that this place needs. What would we have done if Levant had seen mother wandering around the gardens, rambling madness in her nightgown? He would have had her confined and taken delight in pestering us for this house even more than he already is. If he ever finds out that the house belongs to Uncle Bernard, he would be over there as fast as his horse could carry him and we all know that Bernard would snap the man’s hand off just to get rid of us.”

  “I know,” Prudence sighed. “But what is the alternative? We cannot tell anyone that she is like this. To do so would mean that circumstances would be taken out of our control. We would end up in the work house and then where would we be? We would never be able to work our way out of there. There aren’t enough jobs around here for the likes of us to be able to work, so we have no choice but to continue to trade what we can grow and make.” She rounded on Robbie and pointed one long finger at him. “You will not work at Dinnington Hall, do you understand?”

  Eloisa stood in the library doorway, a look of sadness on her face that brought tears to Prudence’s own eyes. Several months earlier, Eloisa and Prudence had planned to look for work at Dinnington Hall, but that was before Lord Dulwich had sold up and left. There were no other large mansions in the area, and they couldn’t afford coach fares to take them further afield in search of work. They were now well and truly stuck.

  “I know that we cannot continue like this indefinitely, but with Ludwig Levant continuing to pester for the house, we must stick together,” Prudence reasoned, unsure how many more ways she could phrase the same thing.

  “But, why don’t we sell him the beach and the lands? The money will enable us to be able to life quite freely,” Georgiana’s voice trailed off indecisively. “Well, for a while at least.”

  “Then what? What do we do when we have to notify our solicitor that the house and grounds are being broken up? The solicitor will tell Uncle Bernard. What if the solicitor wants mother to go into his office to sign any paperwork?” Prudence sighed and gave their mother a worried glance. Given that she didn’t own the house, it wasn’t likely that their mother would be required to do anything except move out, but they couldn’t afford lodgings, even if they could get Agatha to stay lucid enough to convince any landlord to rent to them. “Look at her, she is hardly able to hold a quill, let alone use one, even if she could remember her name.” Her voice quivered at the last and she stopped to gather her shattered emotions.

  She could understand her sibling’s worries because she had echoed them on more than one occasion but, right now, she had no solution to the seemingly insurmountable problems the family faced. The thought that they might have to enter a work house filled her with horror. She had briefly – and only briefly – considered Ludwig’s offer; both of them, before she realised that she would rather prefer the work house than allow that man anywhere near her, her family, or her home.

  “I think that we just have to keep mother confined to the house and hope that she remains inside while Levant is in the area. If she does wander outside, we will just have to tell people that she is battling a fever, or something,” ever practical Eloisa sighed. “Until then, we just have to carry on as we are, and pray for a miracle.”

  She motioned to Robbie to help her and escorted her mother up the stairs. “I know that the lights are gone now, but they will be back soon, I am sure of it,” she sighed. “Come on now, maybe you can see them again from the bedroom window.”

  Prudence waited until they had disappeared out of sight and turned to Maggie. “I am sorry to be so snappy with you today. It is just that I don’t have any answers right now. We have to carry on as we are and hope that mother gets better eventually.”

  “Do you really think that is going to happen?” Maggie asked doubtfully as she moved to the sitting room. “She has got an awful lot worse over the last few weeks.”

  “I know, Maggie, but all we can do is hope and, like Eloisa says, pray for a miracle.”

  Maggie gave her an overly bright smile. “Then that is what I shall do,” she replied firmly. “On Sunday, I shall say an extra prayer for a miracle.”

  “We all shall, Maggie, my dear,” Prudence sighed, hoping against hope that just once, the good Lord would be kind to them. “We all shall.”

  Somehow though, she rather doubted he would be.

  Stephen stood in the depths of the shadows, beneath the canopy of the small copse of trees, and watched the door close to the large rambling manor house. The old woman was undoubtedly Prudence’s mother, and had unquestionably succumbed to madness.

  Why he was there, he had absolutely no idea. He had left Levant in the study at Dinnington and, as per instruction, ensured that the grounds were secure, but not before he had taken a slight detour to Cragdale.

  The hearty glow within the rooms bathed the occupants in a cosy light that made him feel more cold and alone than ever. He had first spotted Agatha wandering aimlessly amongst the neatly tended rows of vegetables and flowers about an hour ago. She had muttered and mumbled, stumbled and staggered her way in aimless circles for some considerable time before Stephen had taken pity on the woman’s sodden state of distress, and had thrown a small pebble at the window to the room he knew was occupied. Sure enough, within seconds, Prudence had rushed outside armed with a shawl, and had gently guided her mother into the warmth of the house.

  He had no idea how the ladies managed to get away with their subterfuge, and he was fairly certain that it was subterfuge. They were clearly trying to keep their mother’s illness a secret from people, but why? Where were the male relatives in the family? As far as Stephen knew, no respectable male relative would ever allow such young ladies to look after a woman who was suffering from madness. Did they not know that Prudence and her sisters were running the house while looking after their mentally deficient mother? Did they not care that their relatives were almost destitute
?

  Although the house was large and old, it was showing alarming signs of decay that warned Stephen that money was simply not available for even the most minor of repairs, or even smaller bits here and here that the ladies could do with a little bit of time and patience, and not much expense. Paint had already begun to peel and crumble; shutters were broken and, on a couple of windows, were half hanging off. The brassware on the front door had long since faded into a dullness that was more in keeping with an empty home than a full and busy one. The grounds that weren’t laid out to plots of vegetables, lay weed tangled and unkempt. The beach was littered with flotsam and jetsam, and the outbuildings that sat atop the cliffs were ramshackle to say the very least, and had parts of the roof completely missing. He couldn’t help but wonder what the inside of the house was like.

  He knew that the way the family lived had absolutely nothing to do with him. If he was honest, he couldn’t even begin to explain why he felt the need to lurk in the bushes so close to her home, but he had. Now, he felt slightly uncomfortable for having done so, but was driven by a curiosity that went far deeper than he was happy with. He tried to reason to himself that he had to know more about the family, the house and the grounds in order to be able to ascertain why Levant wanted the property, and the woman. What was it about them that drew the man’s continued attention? The women were undoubtedly beautiful, and would have benefitted from being part of the busy London social scene rather than living out in the middle of nowhere like they were, but were they worthy of the rather determined, hideously vain attentions of Levant?

  With a shake of his head, Stephen caught sight of the woman who had plagued his thoughts since he had left her digging her garden earlier that same day, and knew that she was the reason that he had felt inexplicably drawn back.