The Lost Heiress

by Roseanna M. White

  The baroness strained against him. “They are just diamonds, Pratt! I am sorry your father lost his life over them, but why would you keep the cycle of violence turning? Why?”

  “Why?” He laughed, and the room seemed to grow darker again. “Have you any idea how much those ‘just diamonds’ are worth, you idiot woman? My father didn’t die for the jewels, he died for what they would mean to us. Never again, in my lifetime or my grandchildren’s, would I have to worry about whether the rents will cover the expenses. If I can afford the necessary improvements. If I need to let a footman go. And that was with a third of their price. Now that Kitty and I are wed, we’ll have two-thirds between us—even if we give Rush his share.”

  “No one in his right mind would spend that much on a couple of pieces of red carbon.”

  Red? Deirdre eased her knees back down. Red diamonds? She’d never even heard of such things.

  Pratt laughed again and pushed the baroness back harder against the trunk when she tried to twist away. “We can debate their sanity all you want, but I’ve a buyer already waiting, and I don’t intend to share my father’s fate by disappointing him. Your pieces of red carbon are destined to grace the throat of a Russian princess, my darling.”

  He gave the baroness another push into the trunk but then stood up.

  Perhaps it was the new bit of freedom that allowed her ladyship to breathe a laugh. “No. You’ll never find them unless I tell you where they are, which I will never do. That I promise you.”

  “Oh. My darling. I think you will. Because it’s very simple. Talk, and you live. Don’t, and you die.”

  “No matter what, I die. How stupid do you think I am, Pratt? You can’t let me go after this.”

  His lips turned up into that evil little grin Deirdre so hated. “I didn’t say I’d let you go. I said I’d let you live.” He sent his gaze down her in a way that surely made her ladyship’s skin crawl.

  “More incentive to keep my lips sealed.”

  Deirdre winced. She was all for standing against him—but didn’t her ladyship realize that antagonizing him would only make things harder?

  Pratt chuckled. “It’s going to be so pleasant, hearing you sing a different tune by the time we’re through. Deirdre.” He motioned for her to get up. With the gun.

  On shaking legs, she obeyed. She tried to promise the baroness with her eyes that she would do nothing to compromise her. Prayed she understood, and that she herself would have the strength to keep that promise.

  Pratt closed his fingers around her arm. “Now, as a gesture of good faith, I’m going to take your lovely little maid here for some refreshment for you. I’ll let her bring in a cot, a pillow, a blanket. You’re going to get a good night’s sleep and consider all you have to lose by withholding from me. And then in the morning, my darling lady, you’re going to talk. Are we understood?”

  Given the pulsing in her ladyship’s jaw, she was clenching her teeth against whatever response she wanted to make. Deirdre loosed half a relieved exhale before Pratt jerked her toward the door.

  Perhaps she could get away somehow. Find help.

  He tossed her through the door and pulled it shut as she fell into the wall opposite. Then, before her addled mind could recover from the jarring, he pressed her to the damp stone. “Don’t get any heroic ideas, my lovely, if you even have such things in you.” The barrel of the gun touched her head, directly upon the wound.

  She whimpered before she could stop herself, though it only made him chuckle. “This is why I took you along with her. She will refuse me—I know that. But you—you’re in there with her, a fellow victim of my cruelty. Get her to confide. Open up. Tell you where the diamonds are.”

  Deirdre pressed her lips shut against the no that threatened to spew out. Better he think she was still on his side, however reluctantly.

  “Do that,” he murmured into her ear, “and I’ll see that your family is set up for all their miserable lives, and you’ll be free to enjoy it with them. Knowing, of course, that if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, it all disappears.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. He thought her so low … and why wouldn’t he? She had proven herself to be little more than a worm, happy to sell her own soul for a few pound notes.

  Not anymore—and maybe this was how she could redeem herself. Earn his trust, fully, so that she could help the baroness escape with her life. It could very well cost her her own if she were caught in it … but it was a risk she had to take. If she were killed, the earl would see her family was cared for. And Hiram—Hiram would be proud, knowing she had done what was right.

  She swallowed and bent her mind into a silent prayer. “How much?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How much will you give me if I help you with this?”

  He chuckled and eased off her. “I thought you’d come around. Let’s say … ten thousand pounds. That’ll be enough to see your family through, won’t it?”

  Undoubtedly. But if he thought greed her sole motive … “No. I went ten percent. Of whatever it is you get from the Russians. Ten percent.”

  “Five.”

  “Fifteen.”

  Laughing again in his throat, he spun her around and pressed a kiss to her lips. It took all her willpower not to wipe it away. His eyes looked almost … affectionate as he tweaked her chin. “I knew I liked you. Pity you didn’t accept my first offer—we would have suited well.”

  She lifted her chin. “Do I have my ten or don’t I?”

  “Fine.” He took her hand and tugged her down the dim hallway. “But you’re going to have to make it quick. Whitby and Stafford will be out looking for her by now.”

  Please, God, lead them here! Help them find us.

  He stopped her at the end of the hall and motioned to a room on the right. Its windows were also bricked over, except for the transoms. But through them she could see only sky.

  “You come no farther than this. I’ll leave the lamp in there for now, and you can take that tray of food and water. But warn her that this is the last of my generosity. If she doesn’t talk by morning, she’ll have nothing.” He motioned to a folded metal cot that looked as if it belonged in a military barracks. “Drag that back for her, if you want. Or if you’d rather watch her suffer through a night on the floor, tell her I changed my mind.”

  Deirdre nodded, kept her face neutral. And prayed she could keep up the deception until Lord Whitby came pounding upon the door.

  Twenty-Nine

  Justin kept his hands in his pockets to hide how they’d fisted. His feet itched, his chest ached. He needed to be doing, not standing here in the drawing room with Brook’s mother looking down on him, all but asking with her painted eyes why they weren’t out there tracking down her baby.

  They’d come back only to exchange the horses and get some water for themselves. But the constable was waiting for them and insisted on a search of Brook’s room before they went accusing another lord of kidnapping.

  Justin paced the library while they went about it. He had wanted to follow them up, but it hadn’t seemed right. He almost wished he had, though, when Whitby returned, his face a thunderhead and eyes flashing lightning. The constable followed, flipping through a stack of what looked like letters.

  Justin’s brows lifted. “Did you find something?”

  “Lies,” Whitby all but spat.

  The constable sent their host a hard look. “Close as you’ve grown, she’s still a young woman, my lord. And they all keep secrets from their fathers.”

  Justin watched doubt flicker through Whitby’s eyes—probably remembering all those things Brook hadn’t told him. But then he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Not this, though. She would not have hidden a romance from me—especially given that she has been in love with him this whole time.” He motioned toward Justin.

  Justin’s throat went dry. “Would someone please enlighten me?”

  The constable motioned with the stack of folded papers. “Lov
e letters, it seems. Dated from the time she arrived through a couple weeks ago. My French is rusty, but they seem to be from an actor. Someone she knew in Monaco. They speak of running off together.”

  “Nonsense.” Justin strode forward and held out a hand until the constable put one of the letters into it. “I know all her friends from Monaco, and there were precious few. No young men.” None, other than him. He would have known it if there had been. He would have known if she’d been in communication with anyone other than Prince Albert.

  And he was shaking his head within moments of reading through the letter. “No. Whitby is right, this is a lie. Aside from the fact that I’ve never heard of the fellow, the writing is all wrong. This was most assuredly not written by a native French speaker.”

  A knock came upon the open door before the others could respond. Mr. Graham stood there, a salver in hand. “Telegram, my lord.”

  Whitby stepped forward to take it, trepidation in his eyes. It darkened to hurt but then blazed into anger as he read it. “No.”

  The constable and Justin both flanked the earl to read over his shoulder.

  Forgive me, Papa STOP I do not mean to hurt you but must follow my heart STOP It is all too much STOP J is too cold and W not serious STOP Need someone who understands me STOP Met the son of a friend of Maman at train station STOP Left with him STOP Will wire when we get to Continent

  The constable sighed. “No doubt the same man these letters are from. Someone must have pinched her car from the station and then dumped it.”

  “No.” Justin balled up the paper in his hand. “No, this isn’t from her. She didn’t leave from the train station—she met me at the abbey after she dropped O’Malley off, and I watched her drive out of town.”

  Whitby’s mouth went firm. “Whoever sent this obviously didn’t know that. Didn’t know the two of you had made up.”

  He was obviously the J in the note—and Worthing must be W. But she never called him Worthing. She called him Brice. He would have been a B.

  The constable didn’t look entirely convinced. He held out a hand toward Whitby. “May I take it with me, my lord, and the letters? I’ll see what we can discover about where it originated. And in the meantime, I’ll thank you two not to go off half-cocked, accusing the neighbors of anything.”

  The request ate him up inside like acid, and Whitby looked every bit as unwilling to agree. His jaw ticked for a moment before he gave a curt nod. “For tonight, Constable. But a father knows. A father knows when something bad has happened to his daughter, and I’ll not sit here while she is hurt or worse. Not again. If you’ve no leads by the morning, the duke and I are paying a visit to Delmore.”

  To his credit, the constable didn’t dismiss it as an idle threat or get in a bluster over it. He merely nodded, considering that as he had the paper in his hands. “I’ve a cousin who’s a groundsman at Delmore. I’ll pay him a call, quietly. See if anything’s amiss on the estate. But you know as well as I that the place is a maze—if by chance she is there, our barging in won’t help us find her. We must go about this with thought and care. And with prayer.”

  Praying—Justin had been praying constantly as they rode through Yorkshire. Mr. Graham had assured them the moment they stepped inside that the staff had spent the last hours on their knees. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they needed even more people beseeching heaven on Brook’s behalf.

  The constable took his leave, promising to trace the telegram posthaste and to call first thing in the morning.

  As Justin watched him go, a hand settled on his spirit. And a name filtered into his mind, making him sigh. He turned to Whitby. “We need to let Worthing know. He seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing what to pray.” Justin had wired him when he got to Whitby, and in the two weeks since, he’d received two letters from the man, both so very to the point that Justin had to wonder if the Lord whispered directly into his ear.

  Brook’s father nodded—then shook his head. “We’d have to send a letter rather than a wire, and we certainly can’t use the phone. The operators could well leak it to the press. But a letter is too slow.”

  “No … wait.” Ideas swirled. Motioning for Whitby to follow, he charged from the drawing room, down the hall, and into the library. Flicking on the electric lights as he entered, he headed straight for the chair Whitby had been in earlier. His newspaper still sat on the table beside it. Justin scooped it up and turned it face out.

  The earl lifted a brow at the picture, weeks old, of Brook that graced the cover. “My point exactly, Duke. The merest mention of my daughter makes the front page. This insipid article is about nothing but the fact that she hadn’t been to a ball in two weeks, and they wondered if she’d left Town.”

  “Exactly. Can you imagine if they learned she was kidnapped?” Pressure mounted in his chest, too desperate to be called excitement—but right. It had to be. “It would be in every newspaper in England. Front page. Every single person in this county and the next would see it and be on the lookout for her.”

  Whitby’s eyes sparked. “If the article made it clear there was a sizable reward to anyone who offered solid information as to her whereabouts …”

  Justin lifted a brow. “How well do you think Pratt can trust his servants?”

  This time, a hint of a smile touched Whitby’s lips as he said, “Not well enough.”

  Tossing the paper back to the table, Justin nodded. “Exactly. But we can’t tip our hand until the constable is ready to intercept anyone coming or going from Delmore.” More waiting—but waiting with purpose.

  “Worthing can help us with the press. He’s as much their darling as Brook—but that again leaves us with how to reach him without tipping our hand too soon.”

  Justin shook his head. “Let’s not forget how uncanny he is. Ring him up. Say you need him to come. I daresay he’ll be here by morning, with no other words needed.”

  Whitby’s features eased a bit, and then he spun for the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I reach him—you had better stay here tonight, Duke. I’ll send someone for your valet.”

  “Thank you.” Though he felt too antsy to sit, he sank down anyway, onto the seat he knew Brook favored. He ran his hands over the arms of the chair, knowing hers were the last to touch the upholstery. He reached over and rested his fingers on the book left on the side table.

  La Chartreuse de Parme. She’d read it before—he remembered her talking about how a Frenchman had captured the Italian spirit. So very Brook, this book.

  His eyes slid closed. “Help us find her, Lord. Please. Keep her safe until we do. Drape your protection over her, keep any harm from finding her. Please. Please.”

  Nothing whispered into his ear. But peace seeped into his chest, and it spread warmth into places he hadn’t realized were chilled.

  The lamp’s oil ran out while she slept. Brook awoke to that cavernous darkness again, and with the sinking certainty that Pratt had meant the words Deirdre had relayed the day before. If she didn’t cooperate, he would bring no more oil. No more water. No more food.

  She sat up, the rusty metal cot squeaking underneath her. Reaching up, she touched the pearls around her neck. If he knew they were here even now … that yesterday, as he held a gun to her head, he had been but inches from the things he desired most …

  What was she to do? She couldn’t give them to him. He might, might let Deirdre go, which would mean she could fetch help, but that was a big if. And even if he did … she had a feeling that Pratt would not waste any time in teaching Brook a lesson. She would pay dearly for her impudence the moment he had the diamonds in hand.

  She couldn’t turn them over. That was all there was to it. She needed some other way of escape, and it would have to come from the Lord—He would have to clear the way for her.

  “A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.” The Scripture filtered into her mind—in English. Odd, given that her Bible reading was still entirely in French. Perhaps it had
been in a recent sermon at the church in Eden Dale or from one of Papa’s daily selections.

  That must be it—she could hear it in her father’s voice. Deep and strong. Authoritative. Promising.

  Papa. Tears burned her eyes at the thought of him. He would be so worried. So afraid of losing her all over again, and over the same thing. And Justin, faced with losing yet another loved one in so short a time… .

  For their sakes, Lord, have mercy. You are my champion. You are my hope. Send out that fire before us to clear the way, mon Dieu.

  The rattle, the clang, and then the influx of light as Pratt came into the room. Perhaps one of these times she could be ready to dart around him, to leap out the door … though Deirdre had said the door at the end of the hall was locked too. She wouldn’t get far enough to make it worth whatever punishment he’d dole out.

  When the light shone on her, she forced a smile. “Good morning, Lord Pratt.”

  His smile was as dark as ever. “Good evening, Brook.”

  Evening? No, it couldn’t be. Deirdre had seen late afternoon sunshine yesterday, she said. They couldn’t have slept that long … or that little. It was a ploy. “Is it? And you’ve not brought us any tea.”

  “You wouldn’t have drunk it if I had.” He nodded toward where Deirdre was stirring on her pallet on the floor. Since Brook had the cot, she’d insisted Deirdre take the pillow and blanket. “Though perhaps your maid would have. I am willing to be civil, my darling. But civility must go both ways. You give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  She would appeal to Pratt’s humanity, if he had any. Deirdre’s warning rang clear in her memory though. He was a heartless devil, capable of anything. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but … she had to try something, didn’t she?

  Drawing in a deep breath, she smoothed her wrinkled walking dress. If she couldn’t appeal to his heart, perhaps she could appeal to his greed. “I will make you a deal. Make me one of your partners, divide it evenly with me when you sell, and I’ll get them for you. You can let me go, and I’ll say my car got stuck and I went out for help but got lost. No harm done.”