by Ranae Rose
The letter was signed with a simple ‘X’.
Elsie stared at the ransom note for several moments before her shock ebbed, giving way to coherent thought. At least she knew why she was being held captive, and horrible as the letter’s promises were, she had no reason to fear, did she? The Remingtons were among the wealthiest families in England, and though ten thousand pounds was a steep sum, it was inconceivable that Damon’s nature would allow him to entertain notions of not paying it. Of course, there was still the matter of his parents. As disappointed as they were by the marriage, did their aversion to having a housemaid as a daughter run deep enough to merit her death?
The sound of someone stirring elsewhere in the house tore Elsie from her worries. As quickly as she could without creating a racket, she scooted back against the wall where she’d been left. The sack lay on the floor, but there was no help for it. She couldn’t possibly get it back on without her hands, and footsteps were sounding in the hall she imagined was outside the door to her cell of a room. Holding her back straight against the wall, she braced herself for whatever would come when she was discovered. She’d intended to meet her captor with a brave face, but when the door swung open to reveal a shockingly familiar figure, her jaw defied her, dropping as his did the same.
****
Jenny’s skirts rustled against the brick wall of a dilapidated tailor’s shop as she rounded the corner, careful to keep an inconspicuous distance between herself and Véronique. The woman had marched out of the apothecary’s premises and maintained a brisk pace since, moving like a bee intent on making its way to the hive. Whatever she was up to, it certainly wasn’t a leisurely Sunday afternoon walk. In fact, Jenny’s legs ached from keeping up with her purposeful stride. When Véronique stopped suddenly in front of a row of houses, Jenny breathed a sigh of relief.
As Jenny watched from against the side of what seemed to be an empty home, a heavy feeling of suspicion settled into her gut, strong enough to make her time spent on the long walk through the city seem well worth it. The townhouse Véronique stood in front of was not the sort of building anyone would imagine the haughty, rich woman sparing a sideways glance for, let alone entering. Its brick front had certainly seen better days, and the few unbroken windows were impossible to see through, thanks to liberal coatings of dust. It was a thoroughly disrespectable house in a wholly unpopular neighborhood that most French ladies visiting London for a season would sooner perish than set foot in. And yet, Véronique opened the front door herself, as if she owned the shabby building, and disappeared inside.
Jenny followed her. After waiting a few moments, she crossed the street, keeping her eyes down and trying to look nonchalant. Luckily, her modest wardrobe allowed her to pass without attracting much notice in the lackluster neighborhood. The door, when tried, proved to be locked, but Jenny hadn’t skulked halfway across the city to be thwarted by such a basic security measure. It was a stroke of good fortune that the house was the last of its row, with no neighbor on the right side. Jenny rounded the corner and hurried around the back, searching for another entrance, or at least a broken window through which she might be able to eavesdrop.
****
Elsie snapped her mouth shut, setting her jaw as the man who’d just entered the room gaped at her like an idiot. And he was a fool – apparently his failed lawsuit against Damon had taught him nothing. The same Lord Griffith who’d taken the Remington heir to court – the Lord Griffith now that his older brother was dead – stood in the doorway, her kidnapper.
Elsie compressed her lips into a tight line, trying not to think about the fact that she was clad in only her thin shift. Fortunately or perhaps not so much, Griffith’s gaze seemed to be stuck on her face, as if he hadn’t in a million years considered that she’d be able to free herself of the sack that had covered it. Just when he seemed about to say something, the sounds of a turning lock and slamming door came from below. The startled look that crossed his face was quickly replaced by an expression that could only be described as fearful. The way he jumped to action was almost comical. Stooping down, he hastily snatched up the thick sack Elsie had managed to wriggle her way out of. For a moment it seemed as if he wouldn’t notice the fallen letter at all, but when he froze, bent at the waist, it was obvious that he had. After glaring askance at Elsie, he snatched it up and shoved it into a pocket. “See here,” he said, his voice low as the sound of a key relocking the door came from below. “You’ll behave as if you were asleep this whole time, or by God, you’ll pay for it.” He pulled the sack rudely over her head and hurried from the room, shutting the door softly behind himself.
“I trust that everything went well?” he asked from beyond the door, his voice calm once again.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs. “I got zee tea, if that eez what you are asking,” Véronique said shortly.
“Ah, excellent,” Griffith replied, a little too enthusiastically. “Shall I brew up another cup, then?”
“Of course you shall.” Suspicion crept into Véronique’s voice. “Why, she ‘asn’t woken, ‘as she?”
“I just checked in on her. She’s fast asleep.”
“Well hurry – eet is already forty-five minutes past zee hour.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Yes, zee crowds are horrible. Idiots milling about in zee sunlight, clogging up zee streets. Eet is worse here than in Paris. Now take care of zee girl – my head aches.” She stomped down the hall, presumably leaving Griffith with the tea powder – whatever it was made of – that would put Elsie into another stupor for several more hours. Cringing at the thought, she began to plan what she would say to Griffith when he reentered the room. If he could be manipulated so easily by Véronique, perhaps she herself could talk some sense into him.
When he stepped into the room, she waited until he lifted her mask to speak, and even then kept her voice at a whisper. “This is foolishness. Are you really so willing to risk your life for ten thousand pounds?”
Droplets of tea sloshed over the rim of the cup Griffith held and fell to the dusty floor below.
“The Remingtons will not let you get away with this, even if they do render the payment. Save yourself. Return me to Damon.”
Griffith chuckled humorlessly. “Ten thousand pounds? I’ll be getting much more than that out of this venture, thank you very much. Now shut up, if you have a care for what happens to you.” He mashed the cup against her lips, spilling a little more of its bitter contents.
Devoting her last moments of lucidity to thoughts of Damon, Elsie drank, telling herself that it didn’t matter if she was awake or not – he would find her. After all, she’d awoke to danger once before to find herself being rescued by him. The only trouble was that this time, the building she was trapped in was not a beacon of flames that could be seen from miles away. If it was as ordinary on the outside as it seemed from the inside, she was practically invisible.
****
Damon’s heart leapt into his throat when a dark-haired, decidedly grubby man strode into the room. After spending a couple whirlwind hours in the city, pressing a coin into the palm of every Bow Street Runner he could find and enticing them with the same reward he had the thief takers, he’d forced himself to return to the house. He’d promised to wait in the sitting room on the first floor, available to anyone with any information whatsoever concerning his wife. The man that approached him now, escorted by a servant, was one of the thief takers. Desperate for information and ready to act upon any he was given, Damon sprang from his chair. “What is it?”
The man clutched his hat in his hands, deep brown eyes fixed nervously on Damon. “It’s nothing definite sir, but I heard somethin’ that may be of interest.”
“What is it?” Damon repeated, his nails biting into his palms as he held his hands in tight fists at his sides.
“Well, there’s been talk of a girl, see – er, a lady perhaps – who was keepin’ company with a strange man last night at a tavern called the Red Oak. Don’t kno
w if you’ve heard of it, but it’s down near—”
“What did she look like?” The words ‘strange man’ echoed in Damon’s mind, setting his teeth on edge.
“That’s the thing, sir. They said she was very pretty, with chestnut hair ‘an green eyes, just like your wife. Young, too. Naught more than nineteen or twenty, I heard.”
Of course, that could have described any number of women in London, but Damon’s heart leapt nonetheless. He raked a hand through his hair, sucking in a breath at the thought of Elsie being sighted alive. Too many times over the past few hours had his mind tormented him with the possibility that she could be lying somewhere with her heart cut out and her body burnt to precious ashes. “Tell me what made a young woman keeping company with a man in a tavern so strange.” There were a thousand ways the situation could be explained. He hardly dared to hope for the one he’d been waiting all morning for.
“Well, they had a huge row, right out in the street in front of the tavern. People who heard it said the girl didn’t want to go with him, wherever he was goin’. She made a real scene, she did, right until the man leaned down and whispered somethin’ in her ear. She went quiet as could be after that. Just walked right along with him, lookin’ cross.”
“Is that it?” Damon frowned. A stubborn young woman matching Elsie’s description. A man. An argument held in the street outside a tavern. Stranger things had certainly happened in London, especially at night. It was so little to go on. It was also all he had; the only lead the day had presented him with, and he was desperate to take action.
The thief taker nodded, adding apologetically. “I know it’s not the best lead sir, but it might be somethin’.”
Damon gladly abandoned the sitting room, moving forward in long strides the other man had to jog to keep up with. “We’re going to the Red Oak.”
Chapter 19
Jenny stood behind the shabby townhouse in a street so narrow it might have been more appropriately called an alley. The upside was that she was alone. Abandoning all pretense of casualness, she pressed her back against the house’s brick wall, hardly daring to breathe as she strained to hear every bit of the conversation coming from the second floor. At first she’d only been able to make out the dull murmur of voices somewhere, it seemed, in the center of the house. Then Véronique and the unidentified man she was speaking to had moved into a room at the far end – if any area had the right to be called that in the tall, narrow building – on the right side of the townhouse. Their voices drifted down through a second-story window that was missing one of its panes.
“’Ave you sent out zee letter yet?”
The man who responded sounded flustered. “I just finished writing it. I will send it within the hour.”
“Just finished? You ‘ave ‘ad hours to compose a simple letter. What ‘ave you been doing while I was gone?”
“Funny that you should ask me that when you’ve just spent the same amount of time buying a simple herb.” His discomposure had quickly given way to apparent irritation.
“I told you – zee streets were busy.”
“Oh? You didn’t happen to cut the hearts out of any particularly annoying pedestrians, did you?”
Floorboards rattled above as someone stamped their foot. “’Ow dare you?”
“Well after the way you carved up that actress, I thought that perhaps—”
“You are zee one who told me to kill her!”
“Kill her discreetly, not butcher her and leave her mutilated corpse for the papers to run wild with. But you botched the job, didn’t you? Not to mention the other two you murdered!”
“I killed them on purpose,” she snapped, as if the grisly murders might have been mistaken for a simple accident or slip of hand, “to send a message.”
“Well, consider that done,” he replied with a snort.
“It got Damon out of ’is new wife’s arms and into zee streets, didn’t it?”
“He goes out nearly every night anyway. At least, that’s what you said.”
“Usually he does – I only ’ad to ask a few questions to determine that much, and I ’ave it on the authority of several other immortals. But clearly you do not know what eet eez like to be a newlywed,” Véronique said in a victorious tone, as if she were sure she’d just won the argument. “He would not ’ave left her at night for at least a week if I ’ad not lured him back to zee streets.”
The man muttered something under his breath that Jenny couldn’t quite make out.
“Besides, this eez a lot of talk coming from someone who murdered his own brother.”
“Yes well, the difference is that no one knows I did it. You, on the other hand, were so flamboyant that any immortal within England’s borders probably suspects that another of their kind committed those murders.”
Véronique would not be robbed of her victory. “People do not realize that you killed your brother because zey are idiots. It could not be more obvious, if you ask me. You ’ad everything to gain: your family’s money, zee privileges of being zee eldest son…” She kept going, ticking off the benefits of fratricide.
Jenny slowly crept away, slipping around the side of the house as quietly as she could. She’d heard enough. She had to find Damon. As she reached the street and broke into a brisk stride, she cast one last look over her shoulder at the townhouse. Elsie was inside – she’d bet anything on it.
****
Jenny pulled aside the first maid she saw. “Damon – I mean, young Master Remington – have you seen him?”
The girl stared at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes and shook her head, punctuating her answer with a sniffle.
Jenny sighed and moved on, careless, for once, of propriety as she gathered her skirts in her fists and lifted them well past her ankles, sprinting. Running was nasty business, thanks to her breathless sojourn from the townhouse in a shabby part of town that was much too far away for comfort. A stitch in her side took away what little breath she had left, eventually forcing her to slow to a purposeful march. She was panting anyway by the time she reached the open area in front of the foyer, where the staircase landed and wide halls stretched to either side, one leading to the servants’ wing and the other to a series of large rooms, most of them used for entertaining. She headed toward those. Damon would not be sulking in bed. If he was at home, he was probably somewhere on the first floor.
Mercifully, Lucinda was perched on the sofa in the very first room Jenny came to – the sitting room. She wasn’t Damon, but she was probably the next best person she could have come across. “I’m looking for your brother,” Jenny explained bluntly, finally dropping her skirts.
Lucinda arched a finely-shaped brow. “He left about an hour ago. I am here in his place, awaiting word from any of the men he’s hired for the search.”
“Never mind them. I think I’ve found Elsie.”
Lucinda was up from the sofa in a flash, her cool composure suddenly gone. “Where?” She was by Jenny’s side quicker than a flash of lightning.
“She’s being held in a house in the city, a good distance from here. I was out for a walk when – oh, never mind! I must tell Damon. Where has he gone?”
Lucinda frowned. “I don’t know. He left without pausing to say so much as a word to me. I had to interrogate several servants just to discover who he’d left with and when. Judging by the fact that you’re looking for him, it seems safe to say that he wasn’t at the place where you believe Elsie to be.”
“Quite.” Jenny buried her fists in her skirts again, clutching and twisting the fabric. “What shall I do?”
Lucinda placed a hand on Jenny’s shoulder and steered her toward the sofa. “First, you shall tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out – even the smallest detail may be important.”
****
Damon reached for the door handle at the servants’ entrance, resisting the urge to simply kick his way inside. The thief taker’s lead had been useless. He’d wasted valuable time traipsing around a lackluster
part of the city only to discover that the arguing couple from the night before had been – well, he couldn’t remember their names, but the woman hadn’t been Elsie, and that was all that mattered. What if another of the men had come for him while he’d been gone? The thought hung over him like a storm cloud, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He shouldn’t have left in such a rush, especially not without even pausing to appoint someone to sit in his place on the sofa in the living room, waiting for news. Yet even as he chastised himself, he knew that he’d do it all over again – would leave the house as fast as he could if given even the smallest clue as to where Elsie might be. Finding her was all that mattered, and he wanted it so badly that even the faintest hint seemed like a promise.
The soft snap and rustle of wind-blown parchment snapped him out of his desperate thoughts. Looking up from his mud-crusted boots, he turned his attention to a bit of paper tacked to the door with what appeared to be a farrier’s nail. He plucked the fluttering square, frowning as he unfolded it. An irrepressible sense of hope seized him when he revealed the greeting, where his name was inked onto the paper in a tidy scrawl. Perhaps one of the thief-takers or Bow Street Runners had left him a note. Perhaps Elsie had been found. He whetted his suddenly dry mouth, touching the tip of his tongue to lips that were cracked in anticipation.