“Vulgar, isn’t it?” George Warren looked down at her with a rueful smile. “My mistake, I am afraid, but I could not resist trying. I promise you, it shall not last long.”
“No?” Kate was looking about her thoughtfully. “The funny thing is … I was at the Pavilion in Brighton once, for a concert. This is… different, somehow.”
“Thank you.” He turned from her mother to surprise her with a warm smile. “Dreadfully vulgar in execution, but at least my own design, based on what I saw in China.”
“In China?”
“Why, yes. I made a couple of voyages to Canton with my uncle after my father died. Will you think me sunk beyond recall if I confess that I made my fortune in trade?”
“Opium?” asked Kate.
“No.” Angrily. “Tea and silk.” He stopped at the sound of a commotion in the hall and turned as Lord Hawth strode into the room, unannounced, travel-stained, seething.
“So!” His black look travelled from Kate to her mother and back. “You are entertaining yourself delightfully, I see. And being entertained.” It was hardly a bow in George Warren’s direction. “I thought I had left my affairs in better hands.”
“Why, whatever is the matter?” The events of the evening had been too much. Silent tears began to slide down Mrs. Warrender’s cheeks.
“Matter enough,” said Lord Hawth as Kate sprang to her mother’s side. “The children have vanished.”
“What?” Kate looked at him, arrested, across her mother’s drooping figure. “The children? Impossible! They were going to run straight home. They promised.”
“Home across the park! In the twilight! One of them a young girl, almost a woman. And you let them go, though you knew their nurse was coming for them?”
“It was not twilight,” said Kate, “and their nurse was late. They lead such dull lives, poor little things, I thought they might be indulged in this.”
“Perhaps their last indulgence,” said Lord Hawth savagely. “You did not, I take it, consider that the man Bowles from Tidemills was on the run? Look!” He had a piece of paper in his hand, now flung it on the table in front of her. “Look at that!”
“Oh, my God!” She stared, horror-struck, at the ill-written, worse spelled message. The kidds is save fyve hunderd kepes them so. She looked up at him. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Much good that is.” He looked past her to George Warren. “I’ve come for your help, Warren, and your household’s.”
“Of course.” He had reached out to take and read the message. “No instructions about the money?”
“No. He can’t be far. My men are searching the park. If you’ll have your land searched, then we can join forces down at Tidemills.”
“Surely there first?” protested Kate.
“No.” He hardly looked at her. “The obvious place. He’s not quite a fool. Oh, my God, If he’s hurt them, hurting them now! Sue, and Giles, and little Harriet…”
“Why!” Kate looked up at him in open amazement “You care!”
“Care! They’re my children, aren’t they? Thanks!” To Warren, who had been giving swift orders: “I’ve stayed too long. There may be another message.” A swift, savage, comprehensive bow, and he was gone.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Warren was on his feet. “I must get out of this rig and join the search.”
“What shall we do?” wailed Mrs. Warrender when he had left them.
“Go back to the Dower House,” said Kate, “And pray.”
“Back there? After what he said. Lord Hawth? Kate, we can’t!”
“What else can we do? Besides, think, mamma. If it had been me, would not you have been angry? Blamed everyone? I … I …” For the first time she realised that she, too, was crying. “I had no idea he cared about them so much.”
By the time their carriage was ready, George Warren had reappeared in serviceable country clothes. “You’re going back?” He had apparently spared the time to think of their predicament.
“Of course,” said Kate. “If they are found, they will need us. Lord Hawth will see that, when he thinks about it”
“I hope so.” Doubtfully. “He was very angry. I’m only sorry … It seems my fault. Mrs. Warrender, if the worst should come to the worst, you will remember, will you not, that there is a home and a welcome here for you?”
She looked up at him through a veil of tears. “Thank you, Cousin George. And now, we’ll not keep you. Come, Kate.”
“Yes, mamma.” Following her meekly to the carriage, Kate wished passionately to be Kit Warrender, able to join the search.
George Warren had been thinking on similar lines. “I wish we knew where that cousin of yours is, that you don’t associate with.” His tone was disdainful as he helped her in her turn into the carriage. “He seems to know what goes on in the district. He would help.”
Kate said nothing. There was nothing to say.
They drove back in wretched silence, both of them crying, neither of them able to reach for any hint of hope. What comfort could they imagine for Sue, and Giles, and little Harriet? And her fault, Kate told herself, over and over. Lord Hawth had been right to be furious, right in everything that he had said. How could she have been such a fool as to have let them go off by themselves, the day after Tom Bowles’ disaster? She, who knew so much more about it than anyone? She, who had actually heard those original threats of kidnapping?
Betty Parsons opened the Dower House door for them. “The men are all out searching, ma’am.”
“Of course. Is there any news?”
“Not that I know of. They’ve finished searching the park, that I do know, and have gone on down to the marsh and Tidemills village. It will be an all-night job, searching there.”
And not much hope, Kate thought, as she followed her mother listlessly into the drawing room. She remembered all the secret places on the marsh where she and Chris had hidden as children. Bowles would know all the smugglers’ hidey-holes and even with children’s lives at stake, who in the village would dare betray them?
The answer stared her in the face. The stranger, Ned Ludd. Whatever he might be, he was a figure of power in the village. He had intervened last night, to save her and George Warren. Might he not again? Worth trying anyway, and anything would be better than to sit here, doing this woman’s work of tears. And if the search was down the other way now, on the marsh, Kit Warrender had a good chance of getting unmolested to the Bell in Glinde.
She rose to her feet, pretending a yawn. “We’re both worn out, and nothing in the world we can do. And we’ll need all our strength in the morning. Hot milk, don’t you think, and bed?”
“Kate, how can you? And those poor children… ”
“Thinking about it won’t help. If there was only something we could do.”
“You’re going out! I should have guessed! You’re going out as Kit Warrender. Kate, I forbid it. As if last night was not bad enough! Shooting a man in cold blood and starting all this trouble!” And then, at sight of her daughter’s face, “I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean …”
“But it’s true,” said Kate bleakly. “And that’s why I’m going, whatever you say, so pray, pray don’t say it. And anyway—” she managed a watery smile—“whatever else I did, mother, I didn’t shoot Tom Bowles in cold blood. I was never so frightened in my life.”
“And so you’re going again?”
“You have to see that I must.”
Mrs. Warrender’s chin came up. “Then I’ll help you dress.”
No need to be quiet in the stables tonight. Every man on the place was out in the darkness, searching. Darkness. Clouds had covered the rag of a moon, and a light, drizzle was beginning to fall. Lucky she and Boney knew their way so well. And where were the children, this damp, chill evening? There were caves under the cliffs at Glinde Head, reachable only at low tide. When she and Chris were children, they had heard blood-curdling stories of escaped French prisoners who had hidden there and been drowned by an unusually high
autumn tide. Suppose …
She would not suppose anything of the kind. She would concentrate on getting through the priory ruins without letting her own terror and anxiety communicate themselves to her horse. The dark seemed extra dark, here where the rained walls closed in around her. But tonight all was quiet, and she breathed a sigh of relief as they came out the other side of the ruins and a gap in the clouds let the waning moon show the white road that led to Glinde.
The town, too, was quiet. No signs of search here. There had always been a deep, tacit hostility between the old market town of Glinde and the brash new industrial village of Tidemills. She had thought Hawth quite right in leaving Glinde out of his calculations. There would be no shelter for a Tidemills law-breaker here.
The Bell, when she got there, was unusually empty. “They’re all out searching,” explained Brown, drawing her pint. “Shocking, ain’t it? They’d a’ gone anyway, I reckon, but Lord Hawth’s offered good money and a reward. I’d be out, too, but for my Trafalgar leg.”
“I’m glad you’re here. Brown, you heard what happened last night?”
“Surely. Good thing you took those pistols of mine.”
“And a very good thing that man Ludd came along when he did. You sent him.” She did not make it a question.
“You know his name?”
“Surely.” She lapsed into broad Glinde. “It’s used freely enough. Ned Ludd.” She spaced the words out for greater emphasis. “A very powerful man. I’ve seen him quiet those madmen down at Tidemills with a lifted hand.”
“You’ve seen a great deal, Master Kit.”
“Enough to know that the best hope for those poor children lies with Ludd. Will you get a message to him for me? Just saying that.”
“I’ll do my best, Master Kit, but don’t you reckon too much on it. I did hear tell he’d gone back to London. He comes and goes so quick, it’s the devil’s own luck to catch him. But I’ll do my possible, I surely will. I wouldn’t want a dog of mine to be in Tom Bowles’ hands, and as for those three children … Well plucked ones as ever I saw. And that Miss Sue almost a young lady. I do hope—”
“So do I.” Kate swallowed a hard lump. “I must be going. I brought your pistol back.”
“Best keep it a while,” said Brown.
But the ride back was uneventful. Only, pausing before she took Boney over the gap in the park wall, she could see lights here and there, down on the marsh, to show where the search still went on. Hopeless enough, surely, until daylight. And yet—how could Bowles, with his wounded leg, have taken the children far? The answer was obvious. He had had help, doubtless the help of the two men who had been with him the night before, who must fear recognition either by George Warren or by Kit Warrender. The ransom, if they got it, would pay for their escape. And what would happen to the children?
It did not bear thinking of, and she could think of nothing else. It was a relief to find her mother sitting up for her, but there was no news.
And still none in the morning, when Joe, the man of all work at the Dower House, came back, heavy-eyed from his long night’s searching, to eat a quick breakfast and go out again. “Tide’s low,” he explained. “We’re to go through the caves under the cliff.”
“Was it very high last night?”
“Yes, miss. Neaps.”
No word from Lord Hawth, but Kate was interested to learn from Joe that a group of men from Tidemills itself had been chosen for the search of the cliff caves. “I was born there,” explained Joe, “and my Aunt Sarah who’s better than a mother to me lives there still. Lord Hawth got us together and told us what he wanted was his children. Nothing else.”
“Sensible of him,” said Kate.
“Funny thing.” Joe was speaking with the freedom of extreme fatigue. “If this had happened when he first came, no one would a’ lifted a finger. I reckon they like him now, down at the mills, without rightly knowing it. He’s hard, but he’s straight, that’s Lord Hawth. You know where you are with him.”
“I wish to God we did,” said Kate, reporting this to her mother. “I’m not sure we shouldn’t start packing our things. We’re going to get our notice, mamma, like a couple of maidservants.”
“No we’re not,” said her mother with surprising firmness. “You’re not being fair, Kate, and you know it. Lord Hawth’s the soul of honour—he’d never—he was out of his mind with worry last night.”
“Why, mamma, how you do start to his defence!” Kate flashed her mother a quick, bright, loving glance. “Just the same, I wish he would deign to let us know what’s going on.”
But the long day dragged glumly on with no word from the hall. “It’s as if we were pariahs,” said Kate. “And I don’t even blame him. It’s the way I’d feel. If they aren’t found I shan’t be able to live with myself.”
“Don’t, dear.” But Mrs. Warrender did not try to offer comfort. There was none to offer.
“If only we could do something. But, do you know, I don’t believe I dare go over to the hall and ask for news.” And then, on a new note. “Mother, Kit Warrender could.”
“No, Kate.” Mrs. Warrender, too, had a new note, one of total finality. “You couldn’t pass it off in the daylight, and you know it as well as I do. It would merely be to compound our disaster.”
“Who cares about us!” But Kate knew her mother was right. Her appearances as Kit Warrender had always been in dusk or dark, by candle or lamplight. Daylight would inevitably expose her. “When it gets dark, then?” The light was beginning to fade already, the September evening settling into autumn.
“What use?” And then: “I’ll send Betty Parsons. Now.”
Betty came back breathless. “No news, ma’am, I’m afraid, but his lordship wants to see you and Miss Kate. He’s just back from Tidemills. He looks dreadful, ma’am. At once, he says.”
“Our dismissal, do you think?” asked Kate as they hurried across the park. “Not that it seems to matter, if only the children are safe.”
“I know. But it won’t be. Lord Hawth wouldn’t do it.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I think I am. Remember what Joe said: hard but straight. He won’t go on blaming you, Kate.”
“But there will be no job for me, if…”
“Don’t,” said her mother.
A scared maid opened the big front door at the hall. “The men is all out, ma’am. He’s in his study, his lordship. Get him to eat something, ma’am. He’s had nothing, not since …”
Entering the study, Kate was reminded of that first time. Hawth might not have eaten, but he had been drinking. A slight flush along the cheekbones was the only colour in the sallow face that seemed to have developed new lines during the night and day of searching. His dishevelled hair and mudstained clothes, however, were very different from the flamboyant evening dress he had worn that other time. His greatcoat, tossed aside on a chair, suggested that he had come straight to the study.
“There you are at last.” He put down his wine glass and rose to receive them. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand on points.” He was addressing Mrs. Warrender, as if Kate did not exist.
“Of course. There’s no news, my lord?”
“Another note. That’s what brought me back. Thrown in at the Glinde gate. Instructions. The money’s to be taken to the priory rains tonight. It means he can’t be far. Or the children, please God. He won’t trust anyone else to come for it, and we know he’s wounded. So … Mrs. Warrender, you must know this district as well as anyone. You’ve visited the poor, that sort of thing?”
“Why, yes.”
“Then, think, ma’am. Remote houses, disused ones, sheds that might give shelter for a night or so. He’s got a horse and waggon, we think, but he won’t want to risk going far. He must know what kind of a search we’re mounting. There has to be somewhere.”
“He could have left the children somewhere else,” volunteered Kate.
“He could have killed the children, Miss Warrender, a
nd still come to collect the ransom.” He looked through rather than at her as he spoke what had been in all their minds.
But she, too, was looking past him. “Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed as the secret panel slid open and Giles appeared, lantern in hand.
“Father,” he said.
“Giles!” Hawth swung round, then strode forward to lift him gently down. “And Harriet!” He amazed himself as much as anyone by kissing her as he lifted her down in her turn. “And Sue! How in the world?”
“We were rescued,” said Giles. “Oh, sir, it has been an adventure. We were scared at first, when they nabbed us. That stinking cart … and the shed … Sue and Harriet cried. I… I don’t think I did.” A defiant glance for Sue. “Only, you see, I knew him. It was Tom Bowles. I’ve been down to his shop with nurse. I said his name. He … he frightened me.”
“You were right to be frightened,” said Lord Hawth. All of the adults knew that whatever ransom he had paid, the children would never have survived after that fatally admitted recognition. “But how did you get away? What happened?”
“We were rescued.” Sue took up the story. She was very pale, with traces of tears on her cheeks, and yet there was something about her, Kate thought, almost a glow. From deferred shock? From, the relief of the escape? “They put us in a shed,” Sue went on. “In the woods. Not far from the park wall. They had a way through. Father, you must have it closed up.”
“Yes.”
“They tied us up. Shut us in. Went away. It was dark. Black dark. I couldn’t get to Harriet. She was crying. Well, I think we all were. And then, after a long time—I don’t know how long—they came.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Strangers. Two of them. They didn’t say much, just untied us. Got us out of there. It was quite near the priory ruins. When we came to them, I said, why not go back that way. Much quicker, and Harriet fussing. So they gave us a lantern and the chief one said that suited him. Least said, soonest mended, he said, and we were to tell you so, Father, with his compliments.”
“Whose compliments?”
“Ned,” she told him. “Ned Ludd.”
Lord Hawth had crossed the room to pull the bellrope. “Call off the search, he told the amazed girl who answered the summons. “And send for Nurse Simmonds.”
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