Treasured Vows

by Cathy Maxwell

  Mordecai waved a dismissive hand toward his son. “My question is, what is Mr. Morgan going to do?”

  “Why me?” Grant asked, his voice tight. “Why not Sir Cecil?”

  “He’s a fool,” Mordecai answered. “And I don’t think he has the money to repay me.”

  “Whereas you think I do,” Grant said.

  Mordecai bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of Grant’s statement. “You are an honorable man and a man who handles important, delicate matters for your bank. I am correct in assuming that this is delicate business, no?” His shrewd eyes studied Grant’s face as if gauging his reaction.

  Grant smiled coolly. “I appreciate your discretion, Mordecai. How much do I write the draft on my account for?”

  “Five hundred pounds,” Mordecai answered.

  “Five hundred pounds!” The words burst out of Grant before he could think. “What is she going to do with five hundred pounds?”

  Mordecai smiled benignly. “For that, my friend, you will have to ask Miss Abbott.”

  Grant had every intention of doing exactly that. Immediately.

  The lamps of Evans House glowed brightly through the foggy evening. Grant took the front steps two at a time and pounded the door knocker against the heavy door.

  A second later a footman opened the door, saw who stood on the step, and blanched before slamming the door shut in Grant’s face.

  What the devil was going on? Grant knocked again with such force he could have splintered the wood.

  The door swung open again, and Mrs. Shaunessy flew out and threw her arms around his neck. “Mr. Morgan, praise heaven you’ve come.”

  “What’s going on here?” Grant demanded as he pried the woman off him and walked into the house.

  Mrs. Shaunessy shut the door behind him, and Grant found himself surrounded by servants, including the stone-faced butler. “It’s Phadra,” Mrs. Shaunessy cried out, and leaned against the door as if she was ready to faint.

  “Stop acting as though this is a theater production,” Grant ordered, catching the redhead by an elbow and making her keep her balance. “What about Miss Abbott?”

  “She ran away!” Mrs. Shaunessy said.

  “Ran away?” Grant repeated blankly. He looked from her to the butler, who silently nodded. “Where are the Evanses?”

  “Out!” Mrs. Shaunessy exclaimed. “Sir Cecil is off to his club, and Lady Evans went with Lady Miranda out to dinner with friends and then to Almack’s.”

  “Maybe we should talk about this in private,” Grant muttered, suddenly realizing that almost all of the Evanses’ servants had crowded into the hallway and were watching Mrs. Shaunessy’s theatrics with intense interest.

  Mrs. Shaunessy waved her hand. “They all know that Phadra’s run off. There are no secrets here, Mr. Morgan,” she said in a ringing voice. “And I’ll also tell you that every one of them is loyal to Phadra.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Morgan,” said the housekeeper, stepping forward. “We all respect and admire Miss Abbott. She’s a saint, and there isn’t a one of us who would do a thing to hurt her.”

  Not for the first time did it strike Grant that Phadra Abbott had a way with servants. He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation and took a deep breath. “All right. What makes you think Miss Abbott has run away and isn’t with Lady Evans and Miranda?”

  “Because they can’t stand her!” Mrs. Shaunessy declared as if Grant were simple-minded.

  “Mrs. Shaunessy—” Grant started.

  “It’s true!” Mrs. Shaunessy gave a shiver of indignation. “You should have heard Lady Miranda carrying on today when the flowers arrived for my dear Phadra. I think she would have murdered my poor girl if it hadn’t been for the footmen.”

  Grant frowned at such nonsense until he noticed that the footmen and the butler were nodding in agreement with Mrs. Shaunessy. “All right. So she is not with them. Where else could she be? There has to be a reasonable explanation.”

  Mrs. Shaunessy grabbed the lapels of his jacket. “I tell you, she has run away!”

  He pushed her arms away. “Mrs. Shaunessy, please come to your senses and think rationally. Where would she go?” With five hundred pounds, he added silently.

  Mrs. Shaunessy opened her mouth to speak and then just as quickly shut it. She shook her head. From the mutterings of the other servants, no one else had any idea, either.

  Then a clear young voice rang out from the back of the crowd. “I think I know where she went.”

  “Who said that?” Grant asked, and the servants pushed forward a young woman in a claret-colored uniform, white apron, and mobcap until she stood in front of him. “What is your name?”

  The maid made an awkward curtsey. “Annie, sir. I’m Miss Abbott’s abigail.” She twisted her apron nervously with her hands.

  “Where do you think Miss Abbott has gone?” he asked.

  “I think she has gone to find her father,” she announced.

  If Grant had been whacked in the head with a hammer, he couldn’t have been more surprised.

  The problem was, the maid’s comment made sense…if one knew Phadra Abbott.

  “Why do you think this, Annie?” he asked softly.

  Annie swallowed. “She wants to see her father. It’s a need inside of her. I understand it. My father died when I was a babe. That need to know is very powerful.”

  Powerful enough to make her do something this foolhardy? Grant turned to Mrs. Shaunessy. “When was the last time you saw Miss Abbott?”

  “This morning, after she received the flowers. And after that nice young captain paid his call.”

  Grant looked at Annie. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “This morning, when I helped her dress. When I knocked on her door later, after Captain Duroy’s visit, she said she was ill and didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “She told me the same thing,” Mrs. Shaunessy said. “Turns out she’d bundled up some clothes and put them under the bedclothes to make it look as though she was sleeping. I just discovered her absence an hour ago when I went to her room to insist that she eat something.”

  So Elrad had been the last one to see her, and that was earlier in the afternoon. Grant wondered if she was really foolish enough to think she could make it to Egypt on five hundred pounds.

  Yes, she was. She’d left Miss Agatha’s Scientific Academy with less. He knew because he’d checked the records.

  “What are you going to do?” Mrs. Shaunessy asked, her voice rising hysterically. “She’ll be ruined once Lord and Lady Evans discover she’s gone. No decent man will marry her. And you know what that means,” she finished in a dramatic whispered aside to Grant.

  He certainly did know what that meant. His marriage to Miranda would be for naught, since Sir Cecil could end up sitting in prison with Miss Abbott beside him—and Grant too, if he wasn’t careful.

  “Do, Mrs. Shaunessy? Why, I’m going to go find her,” Grant promised, his voice steely with determination. “Tonight.” He looked around the hallway at the servants. Their expressions were full of sober concern. “If she is not returned to Evans House before her absence is discovered, her reputation will be ruined and all doors will be closed to her. Do you understand? For her own good, we must all keep her absence a secret until I can return with her.”

  To a man, all the servants nodded. The housekeeper said, “Mr. Morgan, I speak for all of us. You bring that young woman back safe from harm and you can count on us. We won’t breathe a word of this to another living soul.”

  “Thank you,” Grant acknowledged curtly, thinking at the same time that it was futile. Servants never kept secrets, and yet he had no choice. Everything, including Miss Abbott’s safety and his title, hung in the balance. He had to find her before it was too late.

  Mrs. Shaunessy threw her arms around him in a surprisingly strong hug. “You are a good man, Mr. Morgan, no matter what Phadra says. I know you will bring her home safe and sound.”

  Grant
removed her arms from around his neck and promised to endeavor to do so.

  Later, after he’d traveled from post house to post house in the foggy night asking if anyone had seen a young woman matching Miss Abbott’s description, he found his fears for her safety dwindling. As his anger neared the boiling point, he wondered instead who was going to protect Miss Abbott from him once he found her!

  Chapter 8

  By the time the private mail coach pulled into the torch-lit inn yard, Phadra felt jostled black and blue. Crammed into the cheap seats on top of the coach between an onion-eating preacher and a heavyset tinker, she didn’t know which was rattled more—her brain or her person.

  The foggy weather threatened a storm, which she hoped would hold off until she arrived in Portsmouth the next afternoon. She didn’t relish riding the coach in the rain. Already her head ached from the number of times the guard had blown his horn—to show off his musical ability, no doubt!—and a few times the coachman’s whip had nicked off some of the feathers on her bonnet. One passenger sitting knee to knee across from her lost his entire hat to the coachman’s whip when it was flicked off his head and disappeared into the wake of dust behind the coach.

  Still, the stop irritated her. After almost four hours of travel, the coach moved too slowly for her. Her mind reviewed the precautions she’d taken earlier in the day to delay her absence from being discovered. It had to be nigh onto midnight now. At this point, only Henny might have discovered her absence, and she could trust Henny.

  The one person she couldn’t trust was Grant Morgan. When he found out she’d run away, he’d be furious. Especially since the Evanses might then refuse his suit for her daughter. She felt a small measure of satisfaction at the thought that she was saving him from a marriage to Miranda. “One day he’ll thank me. Heavens, he should thank me now,” she said. When the preacher looked up, she was surprised to find she’d spoken out loud.

  “Excuse me, miss,” he said, the onion on his breath almost overpowering.

  Phadra raised her hand palm up and shook her head. “I was indulging in woolgathering.”

  “No, I mean excuse me,” the preacher corrected. “I have to step around you. We only have the time they take to change the horses to grab a bite to eat, and everyone else has left us.”

  “Oh. Well, here, step around me,” Phadra offered, and pulled her skirts back. The preacher didn’t stand on ceremony but stepped over her legs and climbed down the side of the coach.

  At the thought of food Phadra’s stomach growled noisily, and she realized it would feel good to have her feet on solid ground. Carefully she moved to the side and climbed down the ladder, searching with her foot for each rung.

  This trip was a far cry from the one she’d made to London several months earlier. Then she’d thought herself a young woman of means and had hired a private coach with outriders. Mr. Morgan would probably have winced at the expense.

  Her feet had just touched the ground when a pair of large hands clasped her waist.

  “Here. Let me help you watch your step, darlin’,” a husky man’s voice said in her ear.

  Phadra immediately recognized him as the musical guard. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said coldly, and gripped the ladder rail tightly.

  “Oh, I’m sure you are,” he cooed in her ear. She could feel, even through her heavy wool cloak, his fingers moving up to stroke the undersides of her breasts.

  Her heart stopped. Fear that he’d feel the layer of pound notes she’d hidden in the secret pocket of her cloak warred with anger at the liberty he was taking with her person. She’d stayed up until the wee hours the night before, fashioning that pocket and plotting her escape from Evans House. She knew that as a woman traveling alone she was in a vulnerable position, but she had decided that the risks must be taken.

  Now she questioned that decision.

  A whip cracked. “Watty, there’s no time for that,” the coachman shouted. “Leave the passengers alone and help me see to these horses.”

  The guard growled something under his breath and gave one of her breasts a light squeeze before turning away from her. Phadra almost collapsed with relief. She set her feet on the ground and hurried toward the inn.

  The five hundred pounds made her feel rich, but she knew she had to take every economy she could in order to finance her search for her father.

  Phadra rubbed the back of her neck, trying to ease the tension. If she understood the information she’d gotten in London, the Queen’s Bounty was scheduled to sail for the Mediterranean Friday morning with the tide. She planned to be on that ship.

  She was almost to the inn’s front door when she heard the pounding of a horse and rider entering the inn yard. Sparing only a momentary backward glance for the new arrival, Phadra noted the horse’s lathered flank. The animal had been ridden hard. She felt sorry for the horse and wondered vaguely where the rider was going in such a hurry.

  A blink of an eye later, her full attention was captured by a man’s voice saying, “Seven shillings for the table. Seven shillings.” The gray-haired innkeeper guarded the door, his hand held out expectantly.

  Inside the common room, the other passengers were already greedily helping themselves to a round of cheese and loaves of bread at a table set in one corner of the room.

  Again her stomach rumbled, but Phadra reminded herself that she must follow the strictest economies. She lifted her chin. “Seven shillings for a piece of cheese and bread?”

  “Aye, seven shillings and no less. I don’t haggle,” the innkeeper said.

  Phadra wondered if she could manage to go without until Portsmouth.

  Seeing her indecision, the innkeeper turned his attention to the other passengers. Two men were trying to put cheese in their pockets. “No food out the door, mind you,” he called, and walked over to confront them.

  Phadra frowned. A piece of ripe, sharp cheese would taste good, and Portsmouth was hours away. The scent of freshly baked bread nearly made her dizzy. She was about to reach into the hidden pocket of her cloak to remove some money when she heard heavy, purposeful footsteps coming up behind her. A large hand came down on her shoulder.

  This time the guard’s advances didn’t frighten her. “Didn’t the coachman tell you to leave me alone?” she snapped in her haughtiest voice before turning. All other words died in her throat…for she stared into the hard silver eyes of Grant Morgan.

  “Surprised to see me?” he drawled.

  Surprised was a mild word for what Phadra felt. Shocked came to mind. Horrified might be a better description. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her words coming out as little more than a hoarse whisper.

  Reflections of the flames from the lamps flanking the doorway danced in his eyes like twin devils. The dark shadow of his whiskers, his wind-tossed hair, and the fog around him added to his sinister appearance. He had been the rider on the horse she’d noticed, and he seemed to be a far cry from the man who had graced the Evanses’ drawing room over the last several weeks.

  “Come,” he ordered, taking her arm in a steel grip. “I’m taking you back before your absence is discovered.” Without another word he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

  Phadra lost her breath as the world reeled beneath her. By the time she’d gathered her senses, she was being carried unceremoniously out into the inn yard.

  “Who do you think you—What are you—Let me down this second, you brigand!” She began kicking her heels and beating his back with her fists.

  “What goes on here?” demanded the innkeeper’s gruff voice.

  Phadra raised her head to look back toward the inn door. “Please, you must help me!” she shouted. “He’s taking me against my will!”

  At that moment the coachman cried, “All ready!”—the signal for the passengers to return to the coach or be left behind. The other passengers gathered behind the innkeeper, pushing him out the door in their hurry to board the waiting coach. Several servants led by a matr
only woman in a mobcap followed them, attracted by Phadra’s shouting. That was all the encouragement she needed to keep hollering.

  As if her ranting and kicking had no impact on him at all, Mr. Morgan turned to face the innkeeper. “I need to hire a coach and team.”

  The innkeeper’s attention, momentarily distracted by his desire to make sure the passengers didn’t leave with food, turned to the couple making the racket in front of his establishment. “A team, you say?”

  “No!” Phadra shouted. “He’s kidnapping me. He’s taking me to London against my will. I’ve paid my passage to Portsmouth. I don’t want to go back to London.” She kicked her feet harder, wishing she could manage to do some damage to Mr. Morgan, who acted as if her struggles were merely a minor irritation.

  “Kidnapping?” the mobcapped woman said, her eyes growing wide with alarm. “Oh, Edwin, I don’t think that’s right. Not if she’s paid her fare.” Several passengers stopped to watch a moment, although the majority made their way to the coach.

  The innkeeper looked from Phadra’s face to Mr. Morgan’s. “See here, sir. My wife’s right. You can’t just remove any passenger off any coach that you want, not if she’s paid her passage. Isn’t that right, Hobbs?”

  “Isn’t what right?” Hobbs, the coachman, asked, looking up from the harness he’d been checking.

  The innkeeper gestured toward Mr. Morgan. “A man can’t just ride in here and make off with one of the passengers, can he?” The passengers watched silently from their seats, but the servants and stable hands murmured softly amongst themselves.

  His words appeared to penetrate Hobbs’s mind. He stepped closer to Mr. Morgan and bent to peer up at Phadra’s face under her bonnet. “You’re the girl with Watty,” he said with a hint of disgust in his voice, making the connection to his earlier rescue of her.

  Phadra glared at him. “That wasn’t my fault! The man accosted me.”

  Hobs turned to the innkeeper. “I don’t know. I have mail to get through, and I’m running late.” He cracked his whip to stress his importance.