Royal Regard
Page 30
“No. No one knows where she’s gone. I knew she had intended to… well, of course, I said nothing. Michelle told the doctors she must be shopping, but neither was anywhere to be found when I arrived.”
“Bella left my house with Michelle an hour ago.”
Charlotte’s eyebrows shot up. She waved him into the front hall and Watts out, then dragged Nick up the stairs to the library, shutting the pocket doors and sending the footman to the kitchen.
The servants had already prepared the room for callers: tea things and food set out on a low credenza, so that anyone might serve him or herself should servants and scheduled mealtimes be disrupted. Presumably, the half-eaten trays of cold hors d’oeuvres had already been picked through by the doctors, no longer in evidence, all to the good, as far as he was concerned. The smell of cold capon was enough to turn his stomach.
Nick opened and re-closed the doors, ensuring no eavesdroppers.
“Where is she, then?” Charlotte demanded.
“I have no idea!” He began to pace. “She refused to allow me come back with her. We were—” He swallowed the explanation he would never give anyone, and with naught but the small clue in his eye, so did Charlotte. “She refused my presence. Her abigail came to—damn!” Nick remembered where he had seen Bella’s maid.
Charlotte stepped back, eyes wide, but to her credit, ignored the foul language. “What is it?”
“Malbourne.” The last vestiges of Nick’s drunkenness disappeared faster than he could say the name. “Forgive the discourtesy, but Huntleigh is dead, is he not? It was no trick?”
“No, he is gone two hours past.”
“So, just after she left for my house.”
“I don’t know when she—what has Malbourne to do with this?”
“The maid.”
Charlotte stared at him blankly.
“She knows him,” Nick explained, more desperate than was seemly. “I saw them together at Vauxhall but didn’t get a good look. I assumed she was a lightskirt.”
“Of course she is no lightskirt. I hired Michelle myself! Are you certain it was—”
“I’m sure. Entirely sure.”
The more he repeated it, the surer he became, which would normally be enough reason for him to think twice. Right now, though, he could barely think once. “Yes. I’m sure. It was her, and since the maid knows Malbourne,” he said, “we have to assume foul play, but I have no idea where he would take her.”
“Nor I.”
She stuck her head out of the library door. It was a measure of her concern that rather than demurely calling for a footman to quietly fetch her husband, she yelled up the stairs at the top of her voice, “Alexander! Alexander! I need you downstairs at once!”
Nick paced ineffectually, banging his fists against his thighs, wishing he were banging his head against the wall. He tried to rein in his terror by stabbing at the fire with the poker, but it only made him want to take off Malbourne’s head with the cast iron instrument. When he found himself wrapping both fists around the handle, he gently placed it back on the stand and stepped away.
“Have you lost all dignity, Lady Firthley?” her husband chided over the banister. “This is a house of mourn—”
Firthley broke off when he saw Charlotte’s face and ran down the stairs. “What is it?” He saw Nick and nodded his greeting. “Wellbridge.”
Charlotte pulled him into the library and shut the door again. “Bella’s gone missing,” she wailed.
“What?” Firthley’s posture slumped and he leaned against the door jamb. “Missing?”
“Yes! Missing! She’s gone missing!” Charlotte repeated as she nudged Firthley into the room to close the door. Both men could hear how close she was to tears, and the look they exchanged said neither thought they had time to comfort her. “She was with Nick when Michelle found her, and he thinks Malbourne has taken her.”
Firthley eyed Nick, his back stiffening again. “What was she doing with—”
“No matter,” Charlotte insisted, pinching Firthley’s arm hard enough to bring his attention back to the most salient point: “Malbourne has her.”
Firthley nodded and rearranged his priorities. However, he retained the speculative, protective gleam in the corner of his eye, a judgment withheld, but landing directly on Nick. If Bella said one word against him later, Firthley would call him out.
“What has Malbourne to do with this?” Firthley asked, his eyes and ears as open as only a former soldier’s could be. “I know Huntleigh doesn’t—didn’t—like him, but it is a bit far-fetched to—No,” he shook his head. “Surely you don’t think—?”
“She left my house with her maid at a quarter to five in a black town coach. They should have been here long since, and it hasn’t been four nights since I saw the woman kissing Malbourne. I didn’t see her well, but she has brassy hair, possibly dyed, and she’s older. Older than me. Forgive the vulgarity, Charlotte, but she walks like a whore.”
Charlotte looked at Firthley, twisting her hands together. “It could be Michelle. It sounds like Michelle.”
“It is the same woman. I’m telling you.” His hands flailed as he paced, beseeching her not to waste time arguing. Finally, noticing the silent language being passed between the married couple, he stopped to grasp the sleeve of Charlotte’s gown. Firthley inserted himself to break Nick’s hold on his wife, so Nick grabbed Firthley’s coat instead, losing his balance to vertigo when it struck him he had no idea what was happening, and no way to find out.
“Do you have any idea where he might have taken her?” Nick begged an answer he knew no one could deliver.
“No!” Charlotte cried, “If I knew where he had—”
Firthley reached to steady Nick’s arm and held his hand up to stop Charlotte’s increasing hysteria.
“Calm yourselves, both of you. I know something.” Charlotte and Nick froze, and Firthley looked toward the ceiling as though there were a fresco painting there that might elucidate in oils whatever it was he had heard in passing.
“Someone said a week or so ago at White’s—I think it was Shelderhill. Yes, Shelderhill. I’m sure of it. He told me Malbourne was blackballed at Boodle’s again. Of course, neither White’s nor Brooks’s will even entertain the idea of his membership anymore. You might think he would stop trying.”
“His club memberships hardly signify—”
“Quiet, Wellbridge. I’m trying to remember what was said more than a week ago. We were all a bit, well, it had been a festive evening—apologies, my dear, for discussing it in company. Malbourne told Shelderhill he was tiring of London and planned to go back to France. Something to do with his family château… some land being sold? Or he was selling it. I’d be surprised to hear he was buying anything. Everyone knows he is up the River Tick.”
Nick’s hands were held firm at his sides by the best of intentions. “Think what he can buy with Huntleigh’s fortune.”
Charlotte’s head bobbed up and down. “I suppose he knew he had played out his hand. So, it is France or Gretna Green, and Scotland is the wrong direction.”
“And not nearly so friendly to a Frenchman as Calais.”
Nick surmised, “The Dover Road to his estate.”
Firthley crossed to Huntleigh’s desk, keeping his eyes trained on Charlotte like a guard dog.
“Or a riverboat. Either way, he will cross at Westminster.”
The Firthleys’ foreheads, eyebrows, and chins indulged in a four-course argument in the time it took for Nick to look back and forth between them.
Before either could voice the fear choking everyone, Nick named it: “Looking for one carriage, one boat, among hundreds? More than an hour ahead? It’s a fool’s errand.”
Charlotte’s mettle slammed into Nick like a billiard ball when she barked, “You would rather leave Bella to Malbourne?” reminding him, and apparently Firthley, of their sense of valor. Both men straightened up and squared jaws and shoulders before they dared look her in the eye.
“Of course.”
Firthley strode to a Régence secretary desk, but the drawers were locked. “Huntleigh has—had—dueling pistols in here, but I don’t know where he keeps the keys.”
Nick took up the poker from the fireplace and slammed it into the antique, breaking the drawers into pieces, retrieving the dueling pistols, two unmatched guns, and three knives, then filling his pockets with shot.
While Nick was destroying the furniture and loading the weapons, Firthley kissed his wife and told her, “Have the children brought here. Stay with them every minute and send riders to Bow Street and the palace. The king will not yet have heard about Huntleigh, and it would be helpful to have more than the two of us on alert. I’ll leave word of our direction at Charing Cross.”
She nodded. Firthley took out his pocket watch and checked the time. “His Majesty may yet be at St. James’s Palace.” He pulled his signet ring off his little finger and handed it to her. “Send this with the rider, or he’ll be waiting on an audience for days.”
Charlotte stood up on her toes to give her husband another kiss, whispering, “Be careful, my love, and bring her home.”
Nick and Firthley rushed out to Nick’s waiting curricle. As it was a two-seater, Nick told the driver to protect Charlotte and her children at any cost and took up the ribbons himself.
It only took twenty minutes to make it to Charing Cross, but once there, they hadn’t a clue where to look or even whether they were on the right track. The crossing was not just busy, but frenzied, horses and carriages everywhere and a steady stream of business on and off the river craft docked at the wharf. By Nick’s pocket watch, it had been almost two hours since Bella had left his house.
Nick stared at Firthley in sheer bewilderment, unable to make the least decision out of fear of making the wrong one. Firthley took the reins and directed the carriage slowly through the crush to the Royal Mews.
“We need riding horses, and it will be fastest to borrow them from the king. I daresay Prinny won’t begrudge the loan. If we are lucky, someone there will help in the pursuit.”
Both the Duke of Wellbridge and the Marquess of Firthley were familiar, at least by name, to the equerry in charge of the king’s stables, so they were quickly able to make their needs known. Without delay, two of the fastest available mounts were saddled, Nick’s horse was being fed, watered, groomed, and stabled, and three soldiers had mounted to follow them. A contingent of half a dozen men prepared to take the Dover Road, another group left for Gretna Green, and another began a search of the Westminster docks.
Once mounted, Firthley turned his horse toward the nearest coaching inn, the Golden Cross.
“Where are you going?” Nick snapped. “We have no time to stop for a pot of ale.”
Firthley held the reins tightly, his horse dancing to and fro in anticipation of a hard run. “With so little time, it beseems we should ask questions before making guesses. If you’d like to fly off willy-nilly, I will catch you up when I know something of use.”
Firthley ducked his head walking the horse though the archway to the courtyard, where the activity was just as frenetic as the pier. Nick followed him into unending chaos. On two sides of the square, three floors of rooms were stacked like a layer cake, a cacophony rising from the walls—children crying, parents yelling, men and women in various stages of intimate congress, coachmen barking orders to grooms and multiple businessmen all demanding their loads be handled first. The third side of the building housed a stable and feed barn emitting its own earsplitting noise, and the fourth wall, through which Firthley had just entered, was the façade facing the tumultuous street.
Nick looked back toward the road as he entered the courtyard, hands sending mixed signals to his horse—forward, back, this way, that. The poor animal was only moments from shying in all the commotion. Two of the soldiers fell back to keep watch at the entrance, and the third followed Nick and Firthley to back up their claims.
Without dismounting, Firthley barked at the nearest groom: “I am the Marquess of Firthley, and this,” he pointed at Nick, “is the Duke of Wellbridge. A gold crown to the first man to provide the information we require.”
Suddenly, four different grooms and a stable boy no more than ten surrounded them, and a second ring of witnesses formed behind, interested parties who knew nothing but wanted to hear everything. The odor of the stable alone would not have bothered Nick, but added to the pungent privy holes that served the whole building, the aroma was almost more than he could stand, so covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Which still smelled of Bella.
“I’m looking for a Frenchman,” Firthley announced, “dark hair and eyes, possibly dressed in black. He has a woman with him—red-blond hair; she may have appeared drunk or unconscious.”
Nick added, “She was wearing red. Red and gold. Like her hair.” Nick looked at Firthley through the imagined veil of her lavender-lilac hair. He had buried his nose in it not two hours since, and it smelled just like his sleeve. The marquess snapped his fingers before Nick’s eyes, clearing the vision.
Firthley addressed the crowd. “Information that proves true pays out ten gold crowns.”
The grooms all appeared crestfallen, but a stableboy began bouncing from foot to foot, clutching his cap in his hand. “I seen them, my lord! I seen ‘em! Weren’t here, but the livery down Craven Street.”
One of the men cuffed the boy across the head. “And what was you doing down Craven Street when you was told to be cleanin’ the—”
“Never mind that,” Firthley snapped, “What did you see, boy?”
“A fat cull with a lady—leastwise, looked a lady with a fancy red dress, sleepin’ like the dead. ‘E had black hair and cloak and taking ‘er from one carriage to another, orderin’ new horses. Me, I was just passin’.” He gave a guilty look at the man who had boxed his ears. “But I heard ‘im, plain as day. Frenchy, by the sound of ‘im, and up in the boughs, ‘e was, screamin’ like Ol’ Scratch ‘bout a carriage wheel and a coat.”
Nick almost yelled himself, a sharp sound of partial triumph, and then followed with, “Can you show me the spot?”
“‘Course, Yer Grace, but—” The boy looked once more at the man who had called out his dereliction.
“No buts.” Nick reached down to grab the boy’s hand and pulled him onto the saddle in front of him. As Nick turned his horse, he looked over his shoulder at the simmering groom, who was trying to decide whether to object. Nick called out, “The same ten crowns for loan of the boy. I’ll send him back when I’m finished. Firthley, please?” The groom stepped back, bowing slightly.
Firthley took out a money pouch and all but threw a handful of coins at the man, and Nick sped away as fast as he could, given the crowded courtyard opening onto an even more crowded street.
The child held onto the pommel with one hand and the horse’s mane with the other, keeping his head low, as though he were racing, not so far from the truth once Nick cleared the throng and made it to the back streets the boy indicated. The horse skidded in the last turn, so fast Nick was afraid the animal would slide out from under them and break a leg, but this horse was in the king’s stable for a reason. The valiant steed righted himself and was back to full speed in moments. Had he not brought the boy with him, Nick might have driven his powerful mount right past the livery, almost hidden behind a public house.
“‘Tis ‘ere, Yer Grace,” The boy shouted and Nick pulled the reins up short.
He slid off the horse, then pulled the stableboy down and set him on his feet. Looking around, the boy said, “New rattler ain’t here still.” He pointed at a coach, up on blocks to repair the wheel, “but the one ‘e left is there.”
Firthley pulled his horse up next to Nick’s, then
dismounted and loosely tied up both mounts. The stableboy clutched his cap, fist twitching at his side. Only whatever semblance of manners his mother or his master had instilled kept him from holding his hand out for his promised payment, or more likely, Nick thought, reaching into the marquess’s coat. To his credit, the young man just dogged Firthley’s steps like a hungry hound.
Firthley pulled out his money pouch again. “Wellbridge, are you finished with the boy?”
“Let him go.”
Nick maneuvered past the grooms trying to ascertain his business, slamming open the door of the closed carriage. As one of the grooms started, “my lord, you ain’t going to want to—” Nick recoiled at the smell of sick. The entire conveyance rocked unsteadily as he jumped up onto the step anyway. “Damn! Firthley!”
Firthley was so close behind, he ran into Nick’s back. “What is it? Good lord. It smells like—faugh.”
Nick turned and held out a torn piece of red fabric shot with gold threads, caught in the hinge of the door. “This is hers.” He waved his hand toward splashes of blood and vomit staining the floor and the leather squabs on the forward-facing seat. “Presumably all that is, too.” Alexander’s face went white and Nick was sure his mirrored it. He was moments away from adding to the mess on the floor.
A groom was shuffling his feet, waiting to be noticed. When Nick turned toward him, he tugged his forelock and asked, simply, “My lord?”
Firthley said, “He is not a lord, man, but a duke, and you will do best to tell him exactly what he needs to know without delay.”
“Crikey! A duke, is ‘e?” yelped one of the other men. “Two in one day, that is! Ain’t never seen such.” Firthley strode over and began interrogating the man for details of this other duke he had seen.
The grubby stable hand who had tried to warn Nick away from the smell made a discomfited bow, and Nick snapped, “I have no time for niceties. What do you know about this carriage? How long has it been here?”
“Naught but an hour, Yer Grace, mebbe a bit more. The gennulman come in with a cracked spoke on the back wheel, coachman limpin’ it along.” He gestured toward a wheelwright across the stable, peeling away the iron tyre from the hub. “Paid more’n double for a new gig, but we ain’t got nuffink so fast as he wants, not and closed roof, too. Give him a growler, the best we have, Yer Grace, but he won’t have got far, mebbe five miles down the road.”