The baby stirred in the other woman’s arms and began to fret. It was disturbing to watch Charity soothe the baby even as she kept the gun trained on Isabella. “There, there, little mite,” Charity crooned. “There’s nothing to be frightened of. Nothing at all.”
To Isabella she said coldly, “I wouldn’t tell you who hired me, even if I could. Because that would give you some satisfaction. And I’ll be damned before I see you relax ever again, Your Grace.” She said the courtesy with contempt, as if the very words tasted terrible in her mouth.
It was worth a try, Isabella thought, even as the woman’s words sent a shiver down her spine. She wished suddenly that she’d waited for Trevor to return before charging up here. If only because together they’d have an easier time rescuing the baby.
“I’m not quite sure why you hate me so much,” Isabella tried again. “Clearly Ralph was far more fond of you than he was of me. I was little more than an obligation to him. You were the one he wanted to be with. Even though I didn’t know you were there waiting for him across town, I knew that his heart belonged to someone else.” She was improvising now, but she decided if she could convince the other woman that Ralph had truly loved her perhaps she would let down her guard a little.
“You lie,” Charity said, her eyes narrowed. But there was a hint of something there, hope, perhaps, that told Isabella she was making progress.
“No, not at all,” she said, leaning forward in her chair a bit, as if they were two acquaintances chatting over the tea table. “In fact, I once found a note that I thought was written to me but I now suspect was written to you.”
The promise of a letter from her dead lover proved to be just the right sort of lure to spark the woman’s interest. “Why do you say that?” she asked, her eyes a bit less narrow, her lip between her teeth.
“It was addressed to ‘Darling’ for one thing,” Isabella said, hoping that Ralph had been as careless with his endearments with the other woman as he was with her. “Does that sound familiar?”
When the other woman’s eyes lit up, Isabella knew it did. Grateful for her late husband’s laziness, she went on, “If you’ll just let me go back up to my bedchamber, I’ll retrieve it for you.”
But that would have been too easy. Charity’s gaze hardened and she shook her head. “I don’t think so, Your Grace. I don’t think I trust you not to go running for help. No, I’ll come with you, just to keep you company, you understand.”
Careless of the baby in her arms, Mrs. Savery rose from the chair and in the process woke the sleeping baby, who began to wail. “Shut up. Shut up.” Jerking her head at Isabella, Charity indicated that she should take the baby from her arms.
“You hold the little one,” she said coldly, “and I’ll follow you to your bedchamber. I still don’t trust you not to run, but at least with the baby in your arms you’ll be hampered a bit.”
Taking the child, Isabella was disturbed to see a red mark on the baby’s cheek as if she’d been struck. “What’s her name?” Isabella asked the other woman.
“Doesn’t have one so’s I can tell,” Charity said. “I got her from a woman in Whitechapel whot runs a nursery of sorts.”
Isabella could guess what sort of nursery Charity spoke of. Ladies of the ton weren’t supposed to know such places existed, but Isabella had heard about them from Georgina, who in turn had learned about them through her charitable work. They were horrible places where babies were kept and drugged with laudanum until they were too weak to survive. Isabella cuddled the child to her even as she vowed that they would both escape this ordeal. And holding her head high, she led the other woman out of the nursery and into the hallway.
* * *
“Let me see the note again,” Trevor said to Lord Archer from their table at the Goose and Pickle.
Wordlessly the man handed Trevor the folded missive. They’d been approached by an urchin with the note just as they were leaving the Wharton town house.
It had been two hours since the appointed meeting time, and Trevor was feeling hoodwinked. He scanned the words on the page once more to see if they’d missed something. But the message was simple enough. They were to meet this person and in exchange for fifty pounds he would tell them who was responsible for tormenting Isabella. But there was something about the words. The paper. Something that triggered a memory. If only he could remember what.
“Is there anything odd about this note, Archer?”
Trevor’s companion frowned. “You mean besides the fact that it’s a blackmail note? Not particularly.”
“There’s something here,” Trevor said with a shake of his head. As if the shaking would dislodge whatever was making him feel uneasy.
“‘If you want to know who’s teasing yer lady wife, bring fifty pound and I’ll tell yer,’” Archer recited the note from memory. “Is it something about the phrasing?” he asked. “The grammar?”
Trevor thought through the wording of the note again. “It’s ‘lady wife,’” he said. “Someone has used that precise phrase with me recently.” He’d met so many new people since his and Isabella’s arrival in London it was difficult to remember all of them. But someone had used the phrase. It was common enough, but not one that was used all that frequently in his hearing.
Archer shook his head. “I haven’t heard it recently. But who has been speaking to you of Isabella? Perhaps we can narrow it that way.”
“Since the majority of conversation I’ve had since I got to town has been about my hasty marriage, that will hardly make a difference.”
“Good point.” Archer took the note from Trevor and looked at it. “It’s the sort of phrase a person uses when issuing an invitation, like ‘and will your lady wife be joining you this evening?’ or when asking after her, ‘And how is your lady wife?’”
Trevor nodded. “Yes, but those sound like inquiries from our peers. For some reason I think this came from someone with a lower accent.”
Archer tipped his head to the side, rather like an inquiring spaniel. “It would be highly irregular for a servant to use the phrase with you. It’s overfamiliar. And I cannot imagine Timms allowing such a thing in Ormonde House. Or Mrs. Timms for that matter.”
“Yes,” Trevor said. “That’s why it feels so out of place. But I’d swear it was someone in Ormonde House. Not that there isn’t an army of servants to go through there.”
“But not that many who would have reason to speak to you,” Archer pointed out. “With whom do you have conversations among the servants? Your valet, and I believe you’d remember him saying such a thing. The maids? The footmen? Isabella’s m—”
“That’s it!” Trevor interrupted. “It was Isabella’s maid, Sanders.” He felt a chill run down his spine. “I stepped into Isabella’s bedchamber to … uh, speak to her, and Sanders made a point of telling me that she’d leave me alone with my ‘lady wife,’ as if she were doing me a favor by leaving.”
“She would certainly have the kind of access necessary to blackmail you. And if she knows whoever it is that has been frightening Isabella—”
“But that’s just it,” Trevor said. “I’ve had the feeling all evening that this was a diversionary tactic. What if it’s Sanders who has been doing all of this to Isabella? She knows everything about Isabella’s daily life. She knows her likes and dislikes. Just what it will take to push her over the edge.” Sanders even knew, though he didn’t say it aloud, when he and Isabella made love. When they quarreled. When they made up.
“If this was a ploy to get us away from Isabella,” Archer said, “then we’d better get back to the house at once. Because she’s had two hours alone with her.”
But Trevor was already out of his seat and rushing out of the tavern.
* * *
“Just tell me where the letter is,” Charity said sharply once they’d reached the sitting room attached to Isabella’s bedchamber. The hand holding the gun hadn’t wavered once as they’d made their way to the mistress’s suite. And with her prize in
sight, the maid had nearly begun to vibrate with anticipation of reading her former lover’s words to her. She was obsessed, Isabella knew now. Obsessed with a man who had treated her like a used handkerchief. To be cast aside once he’d finished with her. But clearly whatever bond the other woman had shared with Ralph, it had been different from her own. Perhaps to Charity’s disordered mind that had been love.
“It’s hidden inside a book of poetry,” Isabella said, hoping that Charity’s anger when she discovered that Isabella was lying would be distraction enough to let her escape. She moved toward the small shelf of books near her writing desk. “It’s Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
The book was one she kept with her whenever she traveled. She only hoped that Charity had never looked inside it before. Otherwise Isabella was in danger of having the woman catch her out in the lie.
Isabella hoisted the baby onto her shoulder, relieved to feel the child’s shallow breaths on her neck. “Here,” she said, reaching out a hand to grasp the book before Charity could. Isabella flipped open the volume where she’d absently slipped a bill from Madame Celeste to use as a bookmark and hoped that it looked enough like a personal letter to fool the other woman.
Unfolding it, Isabella improvised, pretending to read aloud:
“‘Darling, As I write this my wife sleeps. And all I can think of is you and the child you carry. If only our child could inherit the title instead of the accursed child of this loveless union I’m trapped in. It is you I love. Only you. And no amount of whinging from Isabella can change that. You are the wife of my heart. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure we can be together. Yours, Ralph.’”
As Isabella said the words, she feared that she was overdoing it. Ralph had never been particularly demonstrative with her. But she hoped that Charity’s wishful thinking was enough to make her believe that for the space of this one letter he’d unburdened his heart, such as it was.
“Again,” Charity said, tears streaming down her face. “Read it again.”
To Isabella’s astonishment, Charity had taken a seat in the desk chair and was looking to Isabella like a child requesting a story. Charity had even rested the gun in her lap for a moment.
“I—” Isabella froze. She had improvised the letter. She wasn’t sure she could say the words again just as she’d said them the first time. “Why don’t I give it to you?” she said. “That way you can read it yourself.”
“Read it,” Charity said, lifting the gun again. “I want to hear it again. And I want to hear it in your voice.”
There was something in the other woman’s voice that made Isabella’s skin crawl. It was true that Charity likely could not read the letter for herself. But she also enjoyed, in some twisted way, having her former lover’s wife read his words of love to her, his mistress.
“Please,” Isabella said, her voice soothing. “May I put the baby down so that I can read it properly?”
The maid’s eyes narrowed. As if assessing Isabella’s request for the trap it was. To Isabella’s relief, however, Charity seemed to find the request innocent enough. More fool her. “All right. Put it in the window seat.”
Carefully, Isabella stepped over to the window seat. Not turning her back on the pistol-wielding woman, Isabella lowered the baby onto the cushion and then stood up straight. The letter was clasped in her left hand, while the right, which had been holding the baby, now held a pillow from the window seat concealed behind Isabella’s back. Not wishing the child to be in the line of fire, Isabella stepped quickly away from the window and toward the other side of the desk.
“‘Darling,’” she began to recite the letter again, “‘As I write this…,’” she went on, saying the words as best as she could remember, watching to see if, as before, Charity dropped her guard as she listened to Ralph’s supposed words. To Isabella’s relief, she did. Once more the pistol lowered to rest in Charity’s lap while she lost herself in the letter.
In her head, Isabella counted down. Three. Two. One.
Still reciting the fictitious letter, she lifted the pillow and rushed at Charity with it.
Twenty-one
Ormonde House was quiet when Trevor and Archer arrived. Timms was waiting for them at the door, however.
“Where is the duchess?” Trevor asked before Timms could welcome them home.
If Timms was startled by his master’s sharp tone, he didn’t show it. “I believe she is in her bedchamber, Your Grace. Is something amiss?”
Trevor ignored the question and bounded for the stairs. He could hear Archer behind him, shouting for the butler to send for the watch.
When Trevor and Archer got to the door of Isabella’s suite, Trevor could hear voices. But before he could turn the knob, Archer stopped him.
“You don’t know what’s happening in there. This woman has spent the past few weeks terrorizing your wife. And she clearly had some grand finale in mind for tonight. You don’t want to rush in too quickly and startle her into doing something that will harm Isabella.”
“Then what?” Trevor asked through clenched teeth. “She’s got my wife in there. What am I supposed to do?”
“Come with me,” Archer said, leading him down the hallway a bit to a seemingly bare bit of paneled wall. To Trevor’s astonishment, when the other man pressed a portion of the trim the door opened out to reveal a hidden passageway. “It’s for the servants,” he said, quickly taking a torch from the wall. “These passages run between the family rooms and behind the fireplaces, so that they can go about their business without danger of being seen by the family.”
Trevor would marvel at the architecture later. Right now he wanted to know what was happening in Isabella’s rooms. He followed Archer down the dark hallway and, sure enough, they could hear voices coming from Isabella’s sitting room. They stopped just beside what was clearly the back of a fireplace.
“May I put the baby down so that I can read it properly?” Trevor heard Isabella ask.
“Baby?” he asked. “Where the devil did a baby come from?”
“Come look,” Archer whispered, showing Trevor a peephole that looked into Isabella’s sitting room. When this was over he was going to go through all of these rooms himself and make sure that no one would ever be able to spy on him and Isabella again. “She’s got a pistol. You don’t want to startle her while she’s got that pointed at your wife.”
Trevor watched silently as Isabella carefully laid the baby down in the window seat. What he could see that her captor could not was that Isabella had picked up a pillow while she was depositing her precious bundle. Isabella, he was proud to see, had a plan.
“‘Darling, as I write this…,’” she said, seemingly reading from a letter in her outstretched hand. As he watched she seemed to tap the pillow out in beats. One. Two. And on three she charged the woman in the chair, pressing the pillow against her face.
“Come on,” Archer shouted, bursting into the bedchamber, followed by Trevor.
The two women were rolling on the floor while Isabella tried to get control of the pistol. The two men rushed at them, and while Trevor helped Isabella up from the floor Archer dragged Charity to her feet and pinned her arms behind her back.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “Damn you! Get your hands off of me!”
“Thank god,” Isabella said, collapsing against Trevor’s chest. “Thank god you came. I was afraid she’d kill us both. She’s been the one threatening me. All this time. My own maid. What a fool I’ve been.”
“Easy,” Trevor said, holding her close. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
“I’ll just take Sanders downstairs and see if the watch has arrived yet,” Archer said, tucking the pistol into the back of his breeches. “I’m glad you’re safe, Your Grace.”
But neither Isabella nor Trevor heard him leave.
* * *
“So all this time it was Sanders who was trying to frighten you?” Perdita said with a shake of her head. “It’s extraordinary. I never
for a moment considered that it might be her who was doing it.”
The sisters, Trevor, and Archer were gathered in Isabella’s sitting room, a pastry-laden tea tray before them on the table. Isabella sat in the shelter of Trevor’s arms. Since they’d seen Sanders, or Mrs. Savery, taken away by the watch, he hadn’t been willing to let Isabella out of his sight. And she was all right with that.
“Nor did I,” she said, taking a sip of her own tea. “But the true villain of the piece is as yet uncaught.”
“Can you really think that she was telling the truth when she spoke of being hired by someone else to torment you, Your Grace?” Archer asked, his handsome face creased with worry. “I mean, Mrs. Savery can hardly be considered a reliable source of information in any matter, let alone this one.”
“She seemed perfectly convinced of the matter when she spoke of it to me,” Isabella said with a shiver. “Though I suppose it is possible that she deluded herself into thinking she’d been hired by someone just so that she would not bear the guilt for it herself.”
“I mean to take no chances,” Trevor said, his arms tightening around Isabella. “We will depart London at the end of the week for Yorkshire.”
“But we only just arrived,” Isabella said in a weak protest. If the truth of the matter were known, the glitter of town had lost much of its allure for her. “Though I do miss Eleanor and Belinda.” She turned to her sister. “You must come with us, Perdy. You will adore the girls. And I know they’ll adore you. And you may help me plan Eleanor’s come-out ball next year.”
“I think that’s an excellent notion,” Archer opined. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Your Grace.” Isabella watched as her sister blushed under the secretary’s gaze. Interesting, she thought. Perhaps she needed to have a talk with Perdita. Sooner rather than later.
“I will think about it,” Perdita said, rising. “Now, if you don’t mind, I am exhausted. When I heard those shrieks all I could think was that you were being murdered in your bed.” She bent to hug Isabella.
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